Another California Ground Squirrel (Otospermophilus beecheyi), on the shores of San Francisco Bay.
We found the whole country to be a warren of a strange kind of coneys; their bodies in bigness as be the Barbary coneys, their heads as the heads of ours, the feet of a want,13 and the tail of a rat, being of great length. Under her chin is on either side a bag, into the which she gathereth her meat, when she hath filled her belly abroad. The people eat their bodies, and make great account of their skins, for their king’s coat was made of them.
From Francis Pretty’s account of Sir Francis Drake’s visit to “New Albion.” The California ground squirrel (perhaps mixed up with some attributes of a pocket gopher) may have been the animal seen by Drake’s men.
