THE PEACHES OF NEW YORK 43 



cussing the ruins of a French town near Mobile, Alabama, he says: ' "I 

 ascended the bank of the river, and penetrating the groves, came presently 

 to old fields, where I observed ruins of ancient habitations, there being 

 abundance of Peach and Fig trees, loaded with fruit, which affording a 

 very acceptable dessert after the heats and toil of the day, and evening 

 drawing on apace, I concluded to take up my quarters here for the night." 

 And still again, he found on Pearl Island: ^ " Besides the native forest trees 

 and shrubs already noted, manured fruit trees arrive in this island to the 

 utmost degree of perfection, as Pears, Peaches, Figs, Grape Vines, 

 Plumbs, &c." 



Bartram in his travels found the- peach so widely and abundantly 

 naturalized that he was inclined to believe America to be its habitat. 

 At least Kalm,^ the Swedish naturalist, who visited Bartram in 1 748-1 749 

 reports that Bartram " looked upon peaches as an original American 

 fruit, and as growing wild in the greater part of America." 



In 1758 Le Page Du Pratz, who lived on a plantation in Louisiana for 

 several years and wrote a history of the French colony, says that the natives 

 had peaches and figs when the French settled in Louisiana in 1698. He 

 probably errs, however, in stating that the natives got their trees from the 

 English colony of Carolina since the English did not settle in Carolina 

 until 1670. No doubt the Indians had long before had peaches and figs 

 from the Spaniards of Florida or Mexico. The account which this historian 

 gives of early peach-culture in Louisiana is worth printing in full: * " The 

 natives had doubtless got the peach trees and fig trees from the English 

 colony of Carolina, before the French established themselves in Louisiana. 

 The peaches are of the kind which we call alberges; are of the size of the 

 fist, adhere to the stone, and contain so much water that they make a kind 

 of wine of it. The figs are either blue or white; are large and well enough 

 tasted. Our colonists plant the peach stones about the end of February, 



^ Bartram, William Travels through North and South Carolina, Georgia, East and West Florida 405. 1791. 



'Ibid. 421. 1791. 



^ Kaiia, Peter Travels into North America 3:127. 1771. 



Peter Kalm is so often mentioned in the fruit-books published by this Station that readers are entitled 

 to know something about him. Kalm was a Swede, born in 1715, died in 1779, who was sent by the 

 Swedish government to travel in North America. He landed in 1748 and spent the next three years in 

 travel in the settled parts of the New World devoting himself to the study of the plant and animal life, 

 the natural phenomena, resources and agriculture of the Middle and Northern States and Canada. On 

 his return to Sweden, Kalm pubUshed an account of his travels in America which was afterward trans- 

 lated into German and then into English. To him we are indebted for much valuable information in 

 regard to the beginnings of agriculture and horticulture in the middle of the Eighteenth Century in America. 

 Kalm was a student of Linnaeus and the great botanist perpetuated his memory by naming our beautiful 

 mountain laurel, Kalmia. 



■* Le Page Du Pratz, Hist. La. 2:17. 1763. 



