ESCULENT ROOTS POTATOES. 171 



ing my parents, fifty years ago, relate how, in their 

 childhood and youth, the poor of New-England, when 

 the grain-crop of that region was cut short, as it often 

 was, were obliged to subsist through the following 

 Winter mainly on Potatoes and Milk; and I then 

 accorded to those unfortunates of the preceding gen- 

 eration a sympathy which I should now considerably 

 abate, provided the Potatoes were of good quality. 

 Roasted Potatoes, seasoned with salt and butter and 

 washed down with bounteous draughts of fresh but- 

 termilk, used in those days to be the regular supper 

 served up in farmers' homes after a churning of cream 

 into butter; and I have since eaten costly suppers that 

 were not half so good. 



The Potato, say some accredited accounts, was first 

 brought to Europe from Virginia, by Sir Walter 

 Raleigh in 1586 or 1587 ; but I do not believe the 

 story. Authentic tradition affirms that the Potato 

 was utterly unknown in New-England, or at all 

 events east of the Connecticut, when the Scotch- 

 Irish who first settled Londonderry, N. H., came 

 over from old Londonderry, Ireland, bringing the 

 Potato with them. They spent the Winter of 1719 

 in different parts of Massachusetts and Maine quite 

 a number of them at Haverhill, Mass., where they 

 gave away & few Potatoes for seed, on leaving for 

 their own chosen location in the Spring; and they 

 afterward learned that the English colonists, who re- 

 ceived them, tried hard to find or make the seed-balls 

 edible the next Fall, but were obliged to give it up as 



