224 SIMPLES AND SIMPLERS. 



The herbalists among the early emigrants of Great 

 Britain must have been greatly bewildered, when they 

 went out into our American forests to seek the wild plants 

 of their own native isle, and occasional unhappy acci- 

 dents arose from false identification. When they discov- 

 ered a plant that resembled any well-known English herb, 

 they speedily declared the identity of the two, founding 

 their judgment chiefly on the sensible qualities of the 

 plants. It was by experiments of this class of botanists 

 that the virtues of many of our indigenous herbs were 

 determined. Not a few of our plants, however, owe their 

 medical reputation to Indian traditions. 



Among the recollections of my early life is that of the 

 annual appearance of the herb-women, — vestiges of the 

 ancient class of simplers, — who earned a livelihood, in 

 part, by gathering and carrying to market herbs, roots, 

 and flowers, to be used chiefly in the preparation of " diet- 

 drink," a kind of small-beer, of which the bitter and 

 aromatic herbs were the principal ingredients. In these 

 packages were strips of white-pine bark, which in its 

 dried state gives out the flavor of nutmegs,— slightly bitter 

 and fragrant. The pitch-pine was also plundered of its 

 recent shoots, before they were hardened into wood, and 

 tied up with sweet-fern and the spicy leaves of the bay- 

 berry, and the root of sassafras. The umbelled pyrola, or 

 rheumatism-weed, — a plant that bears several whorls of 

 bright evergreen leaves, surmounted with an umbel of 

 beautiful nodding flowers of purple and white, — also the 

 yarrow and the roots of the yellow dock, were favorite 

 ingredients, combined with the aromatic leaves of the 

 checkerberry and St. John'swort. These careful dames, 

 in the latter part of summer, employed themselves in col- 

 lecting cordial herbs for winter's needs. 



The herbs formerly gathered by the simplers are now 

 cultivated in gardens devoted to this special purpose, be- 



