GOLDEN-FRUITED ORANGE-TREE. 61 



It does not appear that the orange was of Chinese origin, as it is not mentioned 

 by Marco Polo, who is so minute in describing all the other wonders ot^ the 

 "Celestial Empire." It is said to have been found by the Portuguese upon the 

 east coast of Africa ; but it is not known whether it had been indigenous there, 

 or disseminated by the Arabs. When the Portuguese reached India, in the 

 early part of the XVIth century, they found the orange there, and also in China, 

 which was then visited by them for the first time by sea. 



At the Azores, nothing can exceed the rich luxuriance of the orange groves, 

 from November to March, when the emerald tints of the unripe, and the golden 

 hne of the mature fruit, mingle their beauties with the thick, dark foliage of the 

 trees. Although the oranges of the Azores are among the best that are to be 

 met with, they are not indigenous productions of those islands ; but were intro- 

 duced there by the Portuguese, as the same fruit was originally sent, by the 

 Spaniards, to the West Indies, and the continent of America. In the midst of a 

 forest, on the banks of the Cedeno, Baron Humboldt, in 1800, found wild orange- 

 trees, laden with large and sweet fruit. These were probably not indigenous, 

 however, but the remains of some old Indian plantations. 



The orange plantations of the Azores are usually of large extent, always encir- 

 cled by walls fifteen or twenty feet in height, and within thick belts of other 

 trees, to protect them from the breezes of the sea. The trees are commonly pro- 

 pagated by cuttings or layers, arriving, in seven years after planting, to good 

 bearing, and in time, spread out with the majestic luxuriance of chesnut trees. 

 Each tree, a few years after, upon an average, annually produces from twelve 

 thousand to sixteen thousand oranges, and one instance is recorded of a single 

 tree producing twenty-six thousand fruits in a year ! 



The amount of oranges and lemons usually exported from the Azores in a 

 year, is upwards of one hundred and twenty thousand boxes, and seventy or 

 eighty vessels are sometimes seen lying in the roads, waiting to take their car- 

 goes. Besides these, a large quantity of the sweet lemon is cultivated, for 

 home consumption, which are produced by grafting the sour lemon on the 

 orange. This fruit is tasteless and vapid, though esteemed salutary and re- 

 freshing. 



In Algarve in Portugal, and in Andalusia in Spain, there are trees of great 

 size ; and extensive orchards of oranges have formed the principal revenue of 

 the monks for several centuries. In Cordova, the seat of Moorish grandeur and 

 luxury, there are orange-trees still remaining, which are supposed to have been 

 planted as early as the Xltli century : and in the craggy mountains of that 

 province, which are covered with gardens and vineyards, and forests abounding 

 in fruit, the air is perfumed with the flowers of the orange, and carries back the 

 imagination to the days of the Moorish poets and historians, when the land they 

 conquered was adorned with all the refinements of their taste and intelligence, 

 and the luxuries of the east were fully realized. 



The orange is said to have been introduced into Portugal by Camoens. In 

 apostrophizing on a little grove that waved upon an open casement, that poet 

 was heard to say, "Yes, I have made a bower for the honey-bee, hung with 

 golden lamps." 



In France, the orange country is chiefly Provence, or that part which lies to 

 the eastward of the Rhone ; and plantations or groves of oranges are the most 

 abundant, and the most beautiful, on the banks of the Yar. and especially in the 

 environs of Nice, where the varieties are very numerous, and come to great perfec- 

 tion. According to Risso, there was a tree in that neighbourhood, in 1789, which 

 generally bore upwards of five thousand oranges, and was more than fifty feet 

 in height, with a trunk so large that it required two men to embrace it. Here, 



