CHAPTER XII 

 MELONS 



THE national fondness for watermelons, for spicy nut- 

 megs, and their kind is so intense; so inseparable 

 seem our hot summer sun and gorgeously vivid melons, 

 our negro population and gastronomic bliss from national 

 prosperity, from each bit of soil and atmosphere American, 

 that we have long since forgotten that both melon and 

 negro were but adopted and adapted; that they were not 

 as much our own originally as the Indians, as maize, cotton, 

 tobacco, and potatoes. But, with our combined talents 

 for foreign affiliation, amalgamation, and assimilation and 

 our intense patriotism this could not fail to be. The tinge 

 of the tropics which appeals to us in the multi-coloured, 

 formed, and flavoured succulent dainties is entirely 

 typical of our sunny Southern States and they also so 

 richly riot over our broad North-land that it is difficult 

 indeed to remember, even with some unusually concen- 

 trated whiff of musky spiciness from the smaller types of 

 melon, that the whole group had an Oriental origin; that 

 India, "the plains of Ispahan," "the floating islands of 

 Cashmere" — all Asia — have presumably first claim. Lucul- 

 lus is supposed to have introduced the muskmelon and 

 nutmeg into Rome frojn Armenia, but the British Isles 

 made their earliest acquaintance with this group (the 

 smaller melons) in the sixteenth century, when taken there 

 from Jamaica. It is difficult to state the exact date of the 

 melon's advent into America but it is now so much one 

 with the soil that we may be content to waive claim to its 



