130 INDIANA HISTORICAL COLLECTIONS 



peach. Figs ripen here July 1st. Strawberries, April 

 10th, and continue about six weeks. Peaches bloom about 

 the middle of February, and quinces the middle of March. 



I have never seen a more thrifty-looking orchard than 

 the doctor's. But few of the trees are yet in bearing. 

 Mr. S. Montgomery,^ his brother-in-law, who also has a 

 good orchard, is of opinion that summer apples will do 

 well here ; but has great doubts about success with winter 

 varieties. At his place, we were treated with some very 

 fine apples, just plucked from the trees. Certainly, if my 

 wishes for success in raising fruit could insure it, such 

 gentlemen as these would meet with a great share of it. 

 I noticed on Mr. M.'s table, a well read copy of Browne's 

 Trees of America, and a full set of the bound volumes of 

 the Agriculturist. 



Mr. William Montgomery- (the father) has spent a 

 deal of money in a fruitless attempt to dam one of these 

 soft-bank streams to drive a sawmill. Failing in this, he 

 would now gladly avail himself of one of Page's patent 

 circular saw mills, but is afraid to order one for fear it 

 should prove a "Yankee humbug." A thousand other 

 men in the south are in the same condition of this gentle- 

 man. They are greatly in want of just such a machine 

 for sawing boards, but are afraid to purchase. So far as 

 my word will go, I wish to assure them that these saw- 

 mills are just the thing wanted in a country where they 

 cannot have water mills, and where all kinds of sawed 

 lumber is, as it is here, very scarce and dear. Upon every 

 plantation, there is already a horse power to which the 

 sav^nnill might be attached at the gin house. 



It is the fear of "buying a pig in a poke," that prevents 

 a great many of these southern gentlemen from buying 



' S. W. Montgomery, planter, Aurora Hill, Hinds County, Mis- 

 sissippi. Contributed an article, "Select Varieties of Peaches," to 

 the Southern Cultivator, 7:157-58 (October, 1849). 



* William Montgomery emigrated from South Carolina and set- 

 tled in Hinds County, Mississippi, in the early thirties. Riley 

 (ed.), "Diary of a Mississippi Planter," in Publications of the Mis- 

 aisaivpi Historical Society, 10:305. 



