Southern Agriculture—Fruits*. 
145 
ORIGINAL CORRESPONDENCE, 
For the American Agriculturist. 
Southern Agriculture. 
Mississippi City, May 16th, 1842. 
Gent :—Having been favored with the pe¬ 
rusal of the first number of your useful work, 
which invites any correspondence that may 
prove valuable to agriculture, and in devel¬ 
oping the resources of our extensive Union, 
I take the liberty of giving you a partial ac¬ 
count of this section of country and its pro¬ 
ducts. The whole extent of the Mexican 
Gulf Coast, from Pearl River to Mobile, is a 
sandy pine woods country, and generally 
for one to two miles from the sea, the land is 
entirely sand for the first or upper strata 
which is from four to six feet deep. The 
sand is yellow, with a great many small par¬ 
ticles of iron ore, with very little clay or 
earth of any kind below this for several feet. 
Indeed, so far as it has been penetrated, it is 
a white sand, full at all times of the purest 
water. This place is about equi-distant be¬ 
tween New-Orleans and Mobile, by which, 
steamboats pass every day each way be¬ 
tween those great and growing cities. In 
point of health no country in any clime can 
excel this. 
This country was settled originally by the 
French, early in the eighteenth century, 
whose descendants have pretty much occu¬ 
pied it ever since, but seem never to have 
attached any importance to it in an agricul¬ 
tural point of view, except to raise a few 
fruits, which grow as if they were indige¬ 
nous to the soil and climate, such as the Fig, 
Peach, Grape, Plum and Mulberry. In the 
last year or two, however, there seems to be 
more anxiety on the subject of agricultural 
improvement, and I anxiously hope the day 
is not far distant when this will be regarded 
as the most delightful and profitable agricul¬ 
tural region in the Union; as I am well per¬ 
suaded it is the healthiest, and will yield as 
much for the same quantity of labor as any 
part of the United States, notwithstanding its 
great apparent poverty of soil. 
My own experience is very limited, al¬ 
though I have been in the country four years. 
In the month of January, 1839, I planted 25 
cuttings of a Grape, supposed to be the Bur¬ 
gundy, and to have originally been brought 
to this country more than one hundred years 
ago by the French. I obtained the cuttings 
from a vine near the old French Fort on the 
bay of Biloxi, 12 miles from this place. 
Last year those vines bore about two bushels 
of grapes to the vine, the bunches very large 
and full, color blue, and about the size of a 
half ounce ball, not one faulty or bad grape 
to the bunch on an average. I trained the 
vines on a framed arbor about 8 feet high. 
This year the same vines are all very full, 
and the grapes now about half grown, and I 
think will yield from 3 to 10 bushels of 
grapes to the vine. There were many per¬ 
sons last year here who ate of those grapes, 
and universally pronounced them equal, or 
superior in point of flavor to any they had 
ever tasted. They ripen in July. My vines 
are now not quite three and a half years old. 
I planted here at the same time, about 25 - 
cuttings of the large Blue and small Yellow 
Figs, all of which bore a good crop last year, 
and are now full of fruit. The first crop is 
now ripe, and they will continue now to 
yield fruit in abundance until frost, about the 
10th to 25th of November. Each tree will 
yield this year from 3 to 6 bushels of Figs, 
the fruit very delicious and nutritious, and 
last over six months fresh off the trees. A 
neighbor here sold, at 6 1-4 cents per doz., 
sufficient figs off one tree of the large blue 
kind, in the year 1838, to yield him $37. 
The cherry, pear, and apple do tolerably 
well here. The dewberry ripens here the 
10th of April, and is now nearly gone. They 
grow in great abundance on the sand beach 
and about all old fields, and are a delicious 
fruit; either to eat as gathered, or with 
sugar and sweet milk, or for pies, or to make 
cordial. The strawberry does well here, 
and yields two crops ; one the last of March 
and first of April, and the other in July. The 
huckleberry grows all over the woods in 
this country, and ripens in May and June. 
The blackberry grows well, and ripens here 
in June. The ju-jube fruit, of which the 
cough paste of that name is made, grows and 
bears well here, and is a fine fruit. The 
quince and plum does well here as perhaps 
in any climate. The various kinds of mul¬ 
berry grow very rapidly here, on the poorest 
spots, and yield an abundance of delicious 
fruit, and they are now ripe. There is no 
soil or climate that yields more or better 
water-melons, cucumbers, musk-melons, 
squash, or cymlins, okra, black-eyed peas, Li¬ 
ma or butter beans, bunch beans, egg plants, 
tomatoes. The sweet potatoe does well j 
also, the ground or gouber pea, rice, and the 
Irish potatoe, if planted in December and 
manured with lime. 
The olive has been fairly tested by a very 
enterprising intelligent French gentleman, 
Mr. Debuys, at Biloxi, 10 miles from here, 
who says it grows faster and yields better 
than in France, and he believes it could be 
