SOLON ROBINSON, 1848 119 



about ten years. Chestnuts must never be allowed to get 

 dry, to insure their growth. 



Mr. K. and Mr. F. have a fine start of evergreens. They 

 were taken up in the spring with but little dirt to the 

 roots, and boated down the river sixty or seventy miles ; 

 and by such careless handling, more than half died. The 

 soil around here is a sandy loam. The timber mostly oak, 

 except in the river bottom. Mr. K. has some very good 

 Durham cows, and although his wife was from a Louisi- 

 ana plantation, she has become an excellent butter maker. ^ 



Mr. Gookins, although a lawyer, has a fine taste for cul- 

 tivation. He is just beginning a place a mile south of 

 town, where I found some of the handsomest three-year- 

 old apple trees, that I ever saw. Although the ground is 

 a very soft loam, he told me that he had large holes dug, 

 and then fine, rotten manure mixed with the soil, and the 

 hole half filled ; and then with his own hands he carefully 

 straightened all the roots of the young trees, and pressed 

 the dirt around them, so that they seemed to feel no check 

 in growth in their removal from the nursery. His pros- 

 pect for a crop of apples next year, is now good. So much 

 for care in setting out trees. 



Mr. G. has tried planting corn and potatoes in alter- 

 nate rows, and thinks it an excellent plan. 



One of the most favorite apples hereabouts, is the belle 

 fleur. They grow large, and of excellent flavor. They 

 are unlike those of the east in one particular, as I never 

 saw one here with loose, or rattling seeds. The gloria 

 mundi has been grown here of twenty-six ounces weight. 

 Apples throughout all the west, are most abundant this 

 year. Hundreds, aye, thousands of bushels will lie and 

 rot unheeded, here in the Wabash Valley. Many hundreds 

 of wagon loads are hauled near two hundred miles to Chi- 

 cago. If nice, they will sell well, but common ones are no 

 longer worth hauling. 



' The family of Jane McCutcheon and her marriage to William 

 Frege Krumbhaar are mentioned in Arthur, Stanley C., and Ker- 

 nion, George Campbell Huchet de, Old Families of Louisiana, 354 

 (New Orleans, 1931). 



