68 JAMESTOWN CONGRESS OF HORTICULTURE 



We must not omit the growing of vegetables, with which Cana- 

 dians are well supplied. The truck interests are growing rapidly as 

 our cities increase in population. 



At the beginning of the 20th century Canada has about 6,000,000 

 of population or approximately as much as the United States had at 

 the beginning of the 19th century. It has been said that the 19th 

 century was for the United States but that the "Twentieth Century is 

 for Canada." We believe that this is true in regard to horticulture as 

 in other matters. 



HORTICULTURE IN THE EASTERN STATES. 

 JOHN K. M. L. FARQUHAR, BOSTON, MASS. 



Representing as I do at this Congress the section of this country first 

 settled by the white race, it affords me the greatest satisfaction to point 

 to the very early date at which interest in horticulture found expres- 

 sion. The very name of their vessel, the Mayflower, must have brought 

 oftentimes to the recollection of the Pilgrims during their long voyage 

 the fragrant and beautiful hedgerows of white or pinkish hawthorne, 

 which, in England, they had called mayflower, a namfc which they soon 

 bestowed upon the choicest and sweetest of the spring flowers of their 

 adopted country. Long before they saw the mayflower bloom, how- 

 ever, the Pilgrims had raised their voices in praise of the beautiful gar- 

 den products of the new world. The explorers they sent out, November 

 16, 1620, reported that they had found divers fair Indian baskets filled 

 with corn, some whereof was in ears, fair and good, of divers colors, 

 which seemed to them a very goodly sight, having seen none before, 

 of which rarities they took some to carry to their friends on ship- 

 board, like as the Israelites' spies brought from Eschol some of the 

 good fruits of the land. 



In 1621 Edward Winslow describing the new country wrote : 

 "Here are grapes white and red and very sweet and strong also ; straw- 

 berries, gooseberries, raspberries, etc. ; plums of three sorts, white, 

 black and red, being almost as good as a damson ; abundance of roses, 

 white, red and damask, single but very sweet indeed/' 



In the spring of 1621, the Pilgrims at Plymouth planted 20 acres 

 of corn and six acres of bar'ey and peas. The corn did well, but the 

 peas were not worth gathering, having been sown too late and become 

 sun scorched while in bloom. Numerous records of farm and garden 

 crops planted by the Pilgrims have come down to us, and many evi- 

 dences still exist in the locality they occupied of their zeal in garden 

 work. At first the colonists of necessity imported tree fruits and vege- 

 tables for their sustenance. Within twenty years of the landing of the 

 Pilgrims, 'Governor Winthrop of the Massachusetts colony at his farm 

 in Charlestown, 'Governor Endicott of the Salem colony, Governor 

 Prince of the Plymouth colony and Governor Stuyvesant of New 

 Amsterdam had established nurseries, dealt in fruit trees or plants and 

 were promoters of horticulture. Fruits, vegetables and a large variety 



