The Pyramids of Egypt. 361 



signs of heavy bearing, seem hale and hearty as ever, and stand a perpet- 

 ual encouragement to discouraged pear-growers. 



At the ancient village of Cahokia, just below and opposite St. Louis, are 

 pear-trees of much greater age. Mr. Knider estimated them as forty years 

 older than the trees of Mr. Squires, or about a hundred and twenty years 

 of age. George C. Eisenmeyer, in a letter to the Alton Horticultural So- 

 ciety, states that he was informed in 1865 by a Mr. Aubry, who has resided 

 in the " French Bottom," near Cahokia, for the last thirty years, that an 

 old man upwards of a hundred years of age told him that seventy years 

 ago there were large old pear-orchards in the neighborhood of Cahokia, of 

 which five trees now living are the survivors. This would put the time 

 of their planting prior to the year 1750, or about the time the " Company 

 of the West " were endeavoring to settle and improve Upper Louisiana. 

 These trees are said now to be forty or fifty feet high, with trunks three 

 feet in diameter. They produce from fifteen to twenty bushels each of a 

 pear which is said to rival the Seckel ; but this I think must be an exag- 

 gerated estimate of their flavor. It has, however, been sufficiently esteemed 

 to be propagated, by a nursery-man of the county, under the name of the 

 " Cahokia Seedling." 



In 1844, the year of the great flood on the Mississippi, the fruit was 

 gathered, and conveyed to market in skiffs. The trees were not injured by 

 the freshet ; whilst smaller trees, whose foliage was submerged, perished. 



There are other old pear-trees at Prairie du Rocher, but of a much less 

 age ; although, among the American settlers, they would be reckoned patri- 

 archs of the orchard. 



The Cahokia pear-trees are the oldest, to my knowledge, in the Valley 

 of the Mississippi ; and though they will not compare with the Endicott or 

 the Stuyvesant pear-trees in their age, nor with that of Vincennes in their 

 size, they are very big and ancient trees, and suggestive of the best condi- 

 tions of pear growth and hygiene. IV. C. Flagg. 



Alto.m, April 24, 1867. 



VOL. I. 46 



