44 THE PEACHES OF NEW YORK 



and suffer the trees to grow exposed to all weathers. In the third year 

 they will gather from one tree at least two hundred peaches, and double 

 that number for six or seven years more, when the tree dies irrecoverably. 

 As new trees are so easily produced, the loss of the old ones is not in the 

 least regretted." 



There are many nidirect references to peaches in the Mississippi 

 Valley most of which can be traced to Father Hennepin's account of peaches 

 in Louisiana. He says: ^ "The peaches there are like those of Europe 

 and bear very good fruit in such abundance that the savages are often 

 obliged to prop up the trees with forked sticks." It tiu-ns out, however, 

 that Father Hennepin was the Baron Munchausen of the early French 

 explorers, it being doubtful whether he was ever farther down the Missis- 

 sippi than the mouth of the Illinois. Probably, therefore, we must put 

 much of what early writers say of the great abundance of peaches in this 

 region to the soaring imagination of this early religious explorer. Yet 

 these reports are credited by so carefiol a man as Kalm, who writes: ^ "I 

 have been told by all those who have made journies to the southern parts 

 of Canada, and to the river Mississippi, that the woods there abound with 

 peach-trees, which bear excellent fruit, and that the Indians of those parts 

 say that those trees have been there since times immemorial." 



A little later we have reliable information that the peach was 

 naturalized in parts of the Mississippi Valley at least, for Thomas Nuttall, 

 leading botanist of his time and a thoroughly reliable reporter, traveling 

 in Arkansas in 1819, writes: ' "The thermometer towards noon rises to 

 seventy degrees and the peach and plum trees, almost equally naturalized, 

 have nearly finished blooming." And, again,* " The peach of Persia is 

 already naturalized throughout the forests of Arkansa." From this we 

 may picture wild peaches as having grown for generations in parts of 

 Arkansas and, no doubt, of the now famous Ozark region, where, we are 

 told, peach-trees in abundance now decorate, with flower and fruit, primeval 

 forests. 



Reserving the best description of Indian peaches to the last we now 

 turn from Arkansas to the Carolinas. Here, in 1700, John Lawson, a 

 surveyor, who in his work had ample opportunity to know the country, 

 wrote about the wild and cultivated plants of the region. Lawson, although 



' Hennepin Nouvelle dicouverte d'un Iris grand pays etc., etc. 300. 1697. 



^ KaXm, Peter Travels into North America 3:79. 1771. 



' Nuttall, Thomas A Journal of Travels into the Arkansa Territory During the Year iSiQ, 79. 1821. 



* Ibid. lOT. iS?l. 



