92 On Apple Trees and Grafting. 
whom then lived in the neighbourhood ; they used all 
to frequent it and carry off blankets full of apples. 
A very aged Sguaw amongst them who from senio- 
rity was deemed either their priestess or gueen, quite 
gray headed, and who pretended to remember Wiliam 
Penn, used to say, that when the Indians sold their land 
they did not sell their good old apple tree, therefore they 
claimed the apples, and had no opposition from the pro- 
prietor ; the Indians almost worshipped that tree, and 
I remember hearing the aged squaw say, that when the 
“‘ Great Spirit made that apple tree for poor Indians, he 
made the apples ripe all summer ;”—they had a tra- 
dition amongst them, that the tree was older than the 
European settlement, and I am fully inclined to believe 
their ideas correct :—sometime past I was informed by 
a friend of mine living near where the tree stood, that 
it became hollow, and hath been dead and gone for 
some years past; my worthy father taught me before 
seven years old to graft an apple tree, which art I have 
practised very largely, being the only person within 50 
miles round that understood it, and have taught it to 
many people in this country. 
The first pence I ever earned when young, was by 
erafting apple trees for our neighbours; I then took 
erafts off the far famed Townsend tree: since I raised 
trees in this country from the seeds and began to graft, 
my greatest desire was to obtain grafts of that kind. I 
therefore wrote toa much younger brother living in the 
neighbourhood to make all diligent enquiry through the 
neighbourhood for a tree of that kind, he did so, and 
found one which the owners assured him was the real 
kind, yet it was on the decline. ‘This confirms me in thy 
