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middle period were Rev. Andrew Burnaby, Major Robert 
Rogers, Duke de la Rochefoucauld, and others, who 
recorded impressions which cover a period extending from 
1760 to 1800, and after, there are valuable records of resi- 
dents, and of late visitors, but these like those of Samuel 
Carpenter, Richard Frame, and Robert Turner of the first 
period, we shall pass, to present with sufficient detail the 
reports of a few whose contributions are of more value. 
After William Penn, the most important visitor to 
early Germantown was Prof. Peter Kalm, of Aobo, Sweden, 
a naturalist, who with his servant, Lars Youngstroem, a 
skilled gardener, came to America to study its natural 
resources, and who is remembered in Kalmia Latifolia, the 
laurel common to our woods. In America, Peter Kalm spent 
three and a half years, much of this time being passed in 
eastern Pennsylvania, in the vicinity of Philadelphia, and at 
Raccoon, now Swedesboro, in western New Jersey, he leav- 
ing the country by the way of Canada, and on reaching 
Stockholm, published his "Travels in America" an interest- 
ing book, translated and reprinted in two volumes, which 
gives much valuable information. Peter Kalm made three 
visits to Germantown, spending each time from two to three 
days with his countryman and friend Peter Cook, who had 
a farm on west side of Main Street, immediately above Lime- 
kiln Road, now Mermaid Lane. On Saturday, September 
21, Thursday, October 10, and Wednesday, November 13, 
1748, Kalm came to collect information, and his accounts 
are so satisfactory, that we choose to let him appear in his 
own words. 
Sept. 21, 1748; 
"In the afternoon I rode with Mr. Peter Cook, who 
was a merchant, born at Karlscron in Sweden, to his country 
seat, about nine miles from the town, to the northwest. The 
country on both sides of the road was covered with a great 
forest. The trees were all with annual leaves, and I did not 
see a single fir or pine. Most of the trees were different sorts 
of oak. But we likewise saw chestnut trees, walnut trees, 
