SCHOPF AMERICAN TRAVELS. 



white bark, and beautifully leaved. Their smooth, egg-shaped fruit 

 when over-ripe is not at all unpleasant, but by no means to every one's 

 taste. The fruit has an odor of pineapples, but the bark and leaves 

 a disagreeable, repulsive smell. 



The sugar-maple is largely used by the people of these parts, be- 

 cause the carriage makes the customary sugar too dear for them. 

 The tree grows more numerously here in the mountains than in the 

 country nearer the coast ; and one sees now and again in the woods 

 gutters and troughs by means of which the sap is collected. The 

 Indians also are known to make use of the sugar, and they boil it 

 down on the spot. Others prepare it for sale at one ana a naif to two 

 shillings Pensylv. the pound. It is brown, to be sure, and somewhat 

 dirty and viscous, but by repeated refinings can be made good and 

 agreeable.* A domestic tea is prepared from the leaves of the Red- 

 root (Ccanothiis americana), which is really not bad to drink, and 

 may well take its place along with the inferior sorts of Bohea tea. 

 Jonathan Plummer in Washington county on the Monongahela during 

 the war prepared, himself, more than one thousand pounds of this tea, 

 and sold it for seven and a half to ten Pensylv. shillings the pound. 

 His method of preparation he kept secret ; probably he dried the leaves 

 on or in iron-ware over a slow fire. By better handling, more careful 

 and cleanly, this tea could likely be made greatly more to the taste 

 than it is. At the beginning of the war, what with general prohibi- 

 tions and the enthusiastic patriotism, the importing of Chinese tea 

 was for some time rendered difficult, and attempts were made every- 

 where to find substitutes in native growths ; this shrub was found the 

 most serviceable for the purpose, and its use is still continued in the 

 back parts. Along the coa^t this patriotic tea was less known and 

 demanded, but it will soon banish from many houses in the moun- 

 tains the foreign tea which is now become cheaper. The use of tea 

 is everywhere quite common. 



Besides the elsewhere commonly known sorts of wild American 

 grape-vines, there is found on the lower sandy banks of the Ohio a 

 particular vine, of a squat, bushy stem, which bears small, round, 

 black, and sweet berries, and has been observed nowhere else by 

 me. Ginseng and both varieties of the snake-root occur in plenty and 

 are industriously gathered. Of other medicinal plants there are found 

 the Collinsonia, Veronica virginica, Lobelia syphilitica, Aralia race- 

 mosa, NiidicauUs, Spiraea trifoliata, Actcea racemosa, Asclepias tube- 

 rosa, Aristolochia frutescens, etc., and numberless others which I have 

 cited elsewhere in a list of North American sanative remedies. What 

 with our short stay at a season already advanced, the list of the re- 

 maining plants met with in this region would be too uncertain and 

 insignificant to be given place here. We found only a few autumn 

 plants in blooni, and those well known ; but spring and summer in the 



'' More circumstantial accounts in this regard are to be found in P Kalm's description of how 

 sugar is made in North America from several sorts of trees. Schwed. akad. Abhandl XI II. 



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