42 THE PEACHES OF NEW YORK 



Gulf and from the Atlantic to the Great Plains, the peach is naturalized 

 and has run into many varieties of a peculiar and well-recognized type. 

 This is the " Indian Peach " of this vast region, the chief distinguishing 

 characters of which are: Trees with long, spreading limbs; yotmg growth 

 with purplish bark; small, fiat, comparatively persistent leaves; blossoms 

 large; season sometimes covering several weeks; fruit small, streaked with 

 red beneath the skin, giving it a striped appearance, heavily pubescent; 

 flesh usually yellow; ripening very late, season long, and of poor or indiffer- 

 ent quality. The trees of these Indian peaches have a smack of wildness 

 which the best of pruning does not wholly subdue. The aborigines 

 undoubtedly obtained peaches from Spaniards settling in both Mexico and 

 Florida. The first source we have discussed. We come now to the 

 second. 



No doubt the Spaniards planted peaches in their first settlement of 

 Florida at Saint Augustine in 1565. We have no record of the fact but 

 early Indian traders found the natives of northern Florida and the neighbor- 

 ing states growing peaches in and about their villages in such quantity and 

 with such familiarity as to suggest that the several tribes had long known 

 this fruit. Hilton, an Englishman, who visited Florida a htmdred years 

 after the Spaniards established themselves at Saint Augustine, records that 

 " the country abounds with grapes, large figs and peaches." ^ The 

 besetting sins of our early explorers were hasty generalization and exag- 

 geration, and since the Indian peach, in what is now Florida at any rate, 

 does not " abound " we must believe that Hilton was either farther north or 

 was dissembling. Of the abundance of Indian peaches in the other Gulf 

 States, there can be no doubt, for John Bartram, America's first great 

 botanist, a man of note among all American natiiralists, in the account 

 of his travels through this region in 1 765-1 766 frequently mentions the 

 peach as wild or as having been cultivated by the Indians. 



Thus, Bartram says, speaking of the Cherokee town of Sticoe, on or 

 near the Savannah River: ^ " On these towering hills appeared the ruins 

 of the ancient famous town of Sticoe. Here was a vast Indian mount or 

 tumulus and great terrace, on which stood the council-house, with banks 

 encompassing their circus; here were also old Peach and Plumb orchards; 

 some of the trees appeared yet thriving and fruitful." And again, dis- 



' Hilton, William, A Relation of a Discovery lately made on the Coasts of Florida. 1664, Force 

 Hist. Tracts. IV: No. 2:8. 



' Bartram, William Travels through North and South Carolina, Georqia, East and West Florida 

 343- 1791- 



