158 TRAVELS IN THE CONFEDERATION 



it. Plum trees, planted in the ware-house garden, 

 bloomed full every year and yielded abundant fruit. 

 But at one time either the blooms dropped or the fruit 

 was lost before ripe. They assured me that the evil 

 was remedied by boring two holes in every tree, one 

 near the ground and the other higher up, both going 

 clear through the trunk, and in each of which a piece 

 of iron was stuck. Certainly, since this operation 

 blooms and fruit do not fall so much as before. In 

 other parts of America there are very few pear trees ; 

 it is said that along the coast they will not stand the 

 climate, but it might turn out differently if good ex- 

 periments were tried. 



I had heard of sundry ores, among others a silver- 

 ore, to be found in the neighborhood of Nazareth, but 

 wherever I enquired people knew only of similar 

 stories told of places more distant. But there was 

 everywhere the belief, so common in all mountain 

 countries, that really many treasures lay buried in the 

 dear earth, if only one had them or knew how to find 

 them. 



Nazareth has a very good and clean tavern. In 

 peace times the road this way is much travelled, from 

 Philadelphia to Canada, Albany, and New England. 

 But the excursions of the Indians made this road dur- 

 ing the war extremely unsafe. Before the war this 

 was the customary route of Indians travelling to Phila- 

 delphia, but they were never pleasant guests at Naza- 

 reth. There was a strict regulation that no Indian 

 should be given more than half a gill of rum, and then 

 only on payment of the cash money, two laws that the 

 Indians did not willingly conform to, and not to be set 

 aside without danger, if the consequences of their 



