A HUNTER OF PLANTS 



73 



Two of the trees are safely on the road 

 to America now, however, and the others 

 go with me tomorrow. 



bedlam in a Chinese; inn 



"I cannot make up my accounts here, 

 for conditions in the inn are too fierce to 

 allow one to confine one's thoughts to such 

 work," wrote the explorer from Chieh 

 Chou, southwest Kansu, China. "Imag- 

 ine an overcrowded inn, with merchants 

 and coolies shouting and having angry 

 disputes ; with partitions between the 

 rooms so thin as to make them almost 

 transparent, with people gambling with 

 dice and cards all night long; others 

 smoking opium ; hawkers coming in, sell- 

 ing all possible sorts of things, from raw 

 carrots to straw braid hats from Szech- 

 uan, and odors hanging about to make 

 angels, even, procure handkerchiefs. 



"Here you have a picture of 'the best 

 inn in town.' " 



OPPRESSED BY LONELINESS 



Occasionally, during the last year of 

 his travels, a note of loneliness was 

 sounded in his letters : 



"Of course, this exploration work, with 

 its continuous absence from people who 

 can inspire one, gets pretty badly on one's 

 nerves. One must be some sort of a 

 reservoir that carries along all sorts of 

 stores. Soldiers in the field have more 

 dangers to face, but they get at least com- 

 panionship and often recreation supplied 

 to them. 



"For about one month now I haven't 

 seen a white person. 



"My new interpreter is of the sponge 

 variety — that is, absorbing all and giving 

 back little or nothing — and this work of 

 mine is very hard for the Chinese to un- 

 derstand anyway. They seem to consider 

 it a silly thing to spend so much money 

 for a few seeds or plants." 



"Here I am sitting in a small hole of a 

 town, all surrounded by high mountains, 

 on which a slight snowfall has been de- 

 posited during the past night," begins a 

 letter written from a place designated as 

 six days' march west of Ichang, Hupeh. 



"The flanks of these mountains are 

 brown with withered vegetation, but here 

 and there a tallow tree stands out as a bit 

 of flaming red and purple ; some scrub of 



Rhus cotinus (the native smoke tree) is 

 blazing carmine and a few bushes of Rhus 

 ■javanica (another variety of sumac), 

 are of an indescribably warm hue of 

 orange-red. The Indian summer is speed- 

 ing to its close and soon winter will set 

 in. I am trying to round up several 

 things which we would have collected 

 long ago had those wild pears not kept 

 me down at Kingmen. 



THE YANG TAO GOOSEBERRY, RHUBARB, 



PINEAPPLE), AND GUAVA IN ONE 



"A few hours ago I delivered to the 

 local post-office here a small wooden box, 

 made to order, addressed to the American 

 Consul General at Shanghai, marked D. 

 A. 29 and containing twelve fruits of the 

 wild Ichang lemon and some fruits of a 

 smooth variety of a native fruit called the 

 Yang tao. How these fruits will arrive 

 after their long journey in winter time I 

 have no idea. It is only an attempt, like 

 so much in life is. 



"I am highly pleased with the Yang 

 tao, and the more I see of it the more 

 thoroughly convinced I am that it is a 

 coming fruit for the southern United 

 States. 



"The fruits keep well into winter, and 

 they ship well, especially after having 

 been subjected to a few frosts. They are 

 of excellent flavor, being a combination 

 of gooseberry, rhubarb, pineapple, and 

 guava. They have the habit of setting 

 one's teeth on edge, just like pineapples 

 and blueberries, and they are laxative ! 



"But the vines are not hardy. Where 

 one finds them growing well, one notices 

 coir palms, loquats, privets, and bam- 

 boos around the farmsteads. Zero tem- 

 peratures may hurt them badly, I am 

 afraid. 



"The plants also will have to be grown 

 like muscadine grapes — that is, on high 

 arbors — and they might have to be bruised 

 to make them bear heavily. In the wild 

 state, at least, I noticed that plants sub- 

 jected to strong mountain winds, which 

 twist them around at times, bore much 

 more heavily than those growing well 

 sheltered. 



"I am sure that in the rolling sections 

 of the Carolinas, Georgia, northern Flor- 

 ida, etc., where loquats survive for ten 



