LETTEES FEOM ALABAMA. 
235 
the acridity of the milky juice that oozed from the 
skin, and the chafHness of the interior, rather 
damped my enthusiasm. If this is your ripe 
fig,” said I to myself “it is but a sorry affair.” 
But only a day or two thereafter, I perceived a 
great change ; several of the fruits were bloomed 
all over with that soft, blue, powdery surface, 
which we are familiar with on our own plums. 
I gathered one, but it was too soft and tender to 
bear even the pressure of my fingers necessary to 
hold it ; the skin was thin, and devoid of any acrid 
milk ; the interior pulpy, and of the most luscious 
sweetness. I certainly award the palm to the fig, 
of all the fruits I have ever tasted.^' 
By the side of the narrow winding path, which 
I traverse every day, there is, a little way within 
the forest, a Chinquapin-tree (Ctetoea 
It is a miniature representative of the gigantic 
Chestnut, agreeing with it in almost every respect 
except in size, rarely exceeding twenty feet in 
height, the leaves, the fruit, and everything in pro- 
portion. The little nuts are now ripening, and 
about the size of a small marble. In the centre of 
this small tree there is a structure whose dimensions 
would seem to have better suited the magnitude of 
the towering Chestnut ; an enormous nest com- 
posed of sticks, thorny twigs, briers, dried weeds, 
and similar trash, interwoven into a mass as big 
as a half-hogshead, strong and impenetrable. 
There is a small hole near the bottom of the struc- 
* I have since eaten the tropical fruits of J amaica, the mango, 
the pine, the guava, the sweet-sop, the custard-apple, the banana, 
the rose-apple, the star-apple, the naseberry, but their excel- 
lencies have not altered the opinion I have expressed above. 
Not one of them comes up to a perfectly ripe fig, eaten fresh 
from the tree. 
