Addresses — A "Winter Month in Northern Georgia. 180 



body has enough, and no one»needs to buy, and a foreign market 

 appears not to have been thought of, or to be beyond the reach of 

 the feeble enterprise which finds its scope in an orchard of half an 

 acre or less, and the consignment of the surplus crop to the active 

 jaws of swine. I will say, however, that I discovered one man 

 who had the previous season prepared forty or fifty dollars worth of 

 the dried fruit, but he had been put up to this by a villainous agent 

 (undoubtedly a northern carpet-bagger), who urged him to pur- 

 chase a patent dryer at four times its real value, and agreed to 

 take his pay for it in peaches. You will not be surprised if I add 

 (what is strictly true) that at the time of my visit the patent dryer 

 was doing good service as a hen roost in one of the gentle- 

 man's outbuildings, and was well fertilized in all parts for the next 

 year's need. 



There appeared to be no reason why a man, yea, many men, of 

 the requisite business character and some capital, might not find 

 peach groAving in Georgia on an extensive scale, for northern 

 markets, a very profitable business for some years. The fruit 

 reaches maturity there nearly or quite a month earlier than in Dela- 

 ware and New Jersey, and its superior quality ought to render it 

 readily salable in large quantities in northern cities. 



As to the apple, it is evident this does not, in general, flourish at 

 so low a latitude. I saw very few apple orchards in Georgia, and 

 the few to be seen looked less thrifty even than those in Wisconsin. 

 It is stated in the "Hand-Book of Georgia," an interesting and 

 generally accurate compendium of the resources of the state, 

 issued by the energetic State Commissioner of Agriculture, that 

 " The apple succeeds well in every portion of the state where there 

 is an elevation of four hundred or five hundred feet, and a clay 

 soil or subsoil, both of which are generally found combined in 

 Upper, Middle and Northern Georgia." This must certainly be 

 taken with a large grain of allowance. It is about as true as 

 would be the statement that the apple succeeds well in most parts 

 of Wisconsin. My observations and inquiries at and in the vicinity 

 of Marietta (one thousand one hundred and thirty-two feet above 

 the sea, and nearly the highest point on the track of the railroad 

 between Chattanooga and Atlanta), as also in Barstow, the adjoin- 

 ing county north, and at Atlanta itself, which is one thousand and 

 fifty feet above the ocean level, convinced me that only a few 



