62 THE PEACHES OF NEW YORK 



" As a striking instance of the little profit of stills, Mr. O'Donnel, 

 at Canton, had planted an orchard, of great extent, of red peaches, for the 

 purpose of making peach-brandy. The red peach is reckoned much 

 superior to any other for brandy. Although Mr. O'Donnel's orchard had 

 grown to bear in great perfection and he had a still and the other necessary 

 apparatus, the profit proved so small, that he suffered the whole to go 

 waste, and his pigs consumed the produce; and, in the winter, rooted up 

 all those fine peach trees, and planted the ground with Indian com, having 

 previously manured the land with dung from Baltimore for the purpose 

 of an orchard. Now this gentleman had some hundreds of acres of wood- 

 lands unimproved in this plantation; therefore, the cause could not be for 

 want of land. 



" My fine turnips, Indian com, potatoes, &c. were in the field by the 

 orchard without any fence. Indeed hogs are not allowed to run at large 

 within five miles of Baltimore, by an act of assembly; and mine were too 

 valuable to risk such a misfortune; and especially as I was a great hog- 

 shooter myself, it would have been fine diversion for any of my neighbours 

 to have shot one of my fifty-dollar pigs. Seeing that these plants would 

 not succeed, all that remained was to fatten my own hogs with them. I 

 had but seven hogs; and they would have employed a man with horse and 

 cart half a day to feed them; for, after a short time, they will only eat the 

 best peaches, and refuse the others as a man would. I found this plan 

 would not answer; and the consequence was, that, after every trial and 

 exertion, they rotted on the ground. Now my farm was so situated that 

 the great road through the heart of the country went through it, five or six 

 stage-coaches, and great numbers of other carriages of all kinds. In all 

 probability some of my own countrymen as merchants (for there begin to 

 be many of these gentlemen to settle their accounts with the American 

 merchants, and I suppose they will increase) seeing this waste committed, 

 would, on returning to England, relate their story in this way — That 

 when at the tavern at Baltimore on the same day, the fruit-people were 

 asking eleven pence apiece f,or peaches. An Englishman says to himself, 

 ' What idle fools those Americans are ! and I think all the English, when 

 they get to America, are as bad: but, when I get there, I will set them the 

 example.' But when there, he finds himself much disappointed, and does 

 not know how it is that he does not increase in riches, while neither him- 

 self nor his family enjoys any comfort. He at last finds out that the 

 Americans are not a set of fools as he once thought: and, as he must have 

 a name for them, perhaps he calls them rogues; which, if Lord Chester- 

 field was right in his observation, pleases a man the best of the two. 



" When I took this farm, I had not a doubt, that, by some extra- 

 ordinary exertion, I should be able to make something handsome from 

 peaches, and so near Baltimore. Before I took the farm, when I enquired 



