27 



diate use to the fig. It is really one of the wonders of the vege- 

 table world; bearing fruit but no seed, it is only propagated from 

 tha roots. A sprout will come np, and in twelve months, if well 

 cared for, will grow to the enormous size of fifteen to eighteen inch- 

 es at the base. Only one leaf shoots forth at a time, and that from 

 the centre of the trunk. I have seen them put out one after anoth- 

 er, and in six or eight days after the shoot makes its appearance, not 

 larger than your finger, it grows to its full size, which is from two 

 to three feet in width, and from ten to twelve in length, with a stem 

 from two to three inches in diameter at the base. You can lie in 

 your hammocks and see them grow. 



I will now leave the Tropics and talk about Salt, fearing if I re- 

 late too much you will not believe any part of my story. 



I am happy to inform you that my prejudices against Onon- 

 daga Salt have been all overcome; and I want you to say to our 

 mutual friend, who sent me the sample to test in 1860, and who was 

 so extremely anxious about the result as to become nervous when I 

 frankly informed him that the butter cured with it would not retain 

 its flavor equally with butter seasoned with Liverpool salt, and who 

 again furnished me with three or four hundred ponnds for distribu- 

 tion among the butter makers of Steuben county, that nothing in 

 the world affords me greater pleasure than to inform him and your- 

 self, that having subjected it to the most thorough trial that the^case 

 admits of, I am able to state without reserve, that Onondaga salt 

 can be so manufactured as to be equal to the best quality I have 

 ever seen used for butter. And now that you have raised the 

 standard of your salt, I beg of you not to permit it t* recede. It 

 is for the interest of the manufacturers to produce an article equal 

 to the best rock salt from the choicest mines worked in the most 

 thorough manner. It may be well perhaps to give you the details 

 of the test. 



A firkin of butter, seasoned with Onondaga salt, left Steuben 

 county, New York, in October last, and reached this place in Janua- 

 ry. It passed the ordeal of a voyage of more than one thousand 

 miles in the tropics was shipped and reshipped was sent across 

 the Isthmus of Panama remained at Punta Arenas three days in the 

 scorching sand, when the thermometer stood at 120 degs. in the 

 sun was put on board of an open bungo to Barquito, thence to 

 Leon in an open cart, protected all this while by only packing the 

 firkin in the middle of a barrel of salt, where it still remains, 

 (what has not been used,) the surface being carefully covered with 

 salt every time enough is taken out to last the family six or eight 

 days. It stands in a room where the thermometer ranges 

 from 78 to 90 degrees. This butter I pronounce of better quali- 

 ty after this long journey, than any which the people of Syracuse 



