Chapter I: History of the Peach (3)

There are many indirect references to peaches in the Mississippi Valley most of which can be traced to Father Hennepin's account of peaches in Louisiana. He says:[102] "The peaches there are like those of Europe and bear very good fruit in such abundance that the savages are often obliged to prop up the trees with forked sticks." It turns out, however, that Father Hennepin was the Baron Munchausen of the early French explorers, it being doubtful whether he was ever farther down the Mississippi than the mouth of the Illinois. Probably, therefore, we must put much of what early writers say of the great abundance of peaches in this region to the soaring imagination of this early religious explorer. Yet these reports are credited by so careful a man as Kalm, who writes:[103] "I have been told by all those who have made journies to the southern parts of Canada, and to the river Mississippi, that the woods there abound with peach-trees, which bear excellent fruit, and that the Indians of those parts say that those trees have been there since times immemorial."

A little later we have reliable information that the peach was naturalized in parts of the Mississippi Valley at least, for Thomas Nuttall, leading botanist of his time and a thoroughly reliable reporter, traveling in Arkansas in 1819, writes:[104] "The thermometer towards noon rises to seventy degrees and the peach and plum trees, almost equally naturalized, have nearly finished blooming." And, again,[105] "The peach of Persia is already naturalized throughout the forests of Arkansa." From this we may picture wild peaches as having grown for generations in parts of Arkansas and, no doubt, of the now famous Ozark region, where, we are told, peach-trees in abundance now decorate, with flower and fruit, primeval forests.

Reserving the best description of Indian peaches to the last we now turn from Arkansas to the Carolinas. Here, in 1700, John Lawson, a surveyor, who in his work had ample opportunity to know the country, wrote about the wild and cultivated plants of the region. Lawson, although not a trained naturalist, was a keen observer, a lover of nature and much interested in the agricultural development of the Carolinas. Moreover, he writes so simply, directly, and in a tone so temperate, in contrast to the declamatory style of the times, that one accepts without question what he says. We feel we are justified in quoting at some length Lawson's description of Indian peaches:[106]

"All peaches with us are standing; neither have we any wall fruit in Carolina, for we have heat enough, and therefore do not require it. We have a great many sorts of this fruit, which all thrive to admiration, peach trees coming to perfection, with us, as easily as the weeds. A peach falling to the ground brings a peach tree that shall bear in three years, or sometimes sooner. Eating peaches in our orchards makes them come up so thick from the kernel, that we are forced to take a great deal of care to weed them out, otherwise they make our land a wilderness of peach trees. They generally bear so full that they break great part of their limbs down. We have likewise very fair nectarines, especially the red, that clings to the stone; the other yellow fruit, that leaves the stone. Of the last I have a tree that most years brings me fifteen or twenty bushels. I see no foreign fruit like this, for thriving in all sorts of land, and bearing its fruit to admiration. I want to be satisfied about one sort of this fruit, which the Indians claim as their own, and affirm they had it growing amongst them before any Europeans came to America.

The fruit I will describe as exactly as I can. The tree grows very large, most commonly as big as a handsome apple tree; the flowers are of a reddish, murrey color, the fruit is rather more downy than the yellow peach, and commonly very large and soft, being very full of juice. They part freely from the stone, and the stone is much thicker than all the other peach stones we have, which seems to me that it is a spontaneous fruit of America; yet in those parts of America that we inhabit, I never could hear that any peach trees were ever found growing in the woods; neither have the foreign Indians, that live remote from the English, any other sort. And those living amongst us have a hundred of this sort for one other. They are a hardy fruit, and are seldom damaged by the north-east blast, as others are. Of this sort we make vinegar; wherefore we call them vinegar peaches, and sometimes Indian peaches.

This tree grows to a vast bigness, exceeding most apple trees. They bear well, though sometimes an early spring comes on in February, and perhaps when the tree is fully blown, the cloudy, north-east winds, which attend the end of that month, or the beginning of March, destroy most of the fruit. The biggest apricot tree I ever saw, as they told me, was grafted on a peach stock in the ground. I know of no other sort with us, than the common. We generally raise this fruit from the stone, which never fails to bring the same fruit. Likewise our peach stones effect the same, without so much as once missing to produce the same sort that the stone came from."

_Peaches in the colonies._--The first peaches in the American colonies must have been planted at Jamestown for, in 1629, Captain John Smith writes of "peaches in abundance."[107] The trees, however, seem to have been neglected for, continuing, Smith says: "Apples, Peares, Apricocks, Vines, figges, and other fruits some have planted, that prospered exceedingly; but their diligence about Tobacco left them to be spoiled by the cattell; yet now they beginne to revive." The settlement in Virginia at that time, so soon after the Indian massacres, was small and there could have been but few trees so that Smith's "abundance" was but as a grain of sand on the seashore with the many thousands of bushels required to make an abundance at the present time.

Despite the neglect of fruit to attend to tobacco which Smith laments, the planting of orchards must have gone on apace, for in 1633 a Dutch sea-captain named De Vries visiting Virginia describes the Menife plantation, famous in the colony at that time, as having a garden containing rosemary, sage, marjoram and thyme, the apple, pear and cherry while the house itself was surrounded by peach-trees.[108] Three years later, 1642, Berkeley became governor of the colony and we are told that about his house at Green Spring there were fifteen hundred apple, peach, apricot, quince and other fruit-trees.[109] Robert Evelyn, writing forty years after the settlement of Jamestown says: "Peaches better than Apricocks by some doe feed hogs, one man hath ten thousand trees."[110]

Fruit-growing in colonial Virginia was not without promoters and one, a Colonel Norwood, had the persuasive eloquence of the barkers for get-rich-quick orchard-planting concerns of our own times. Colonel Norwood, an Englishman, visited Virginia in 1649 and on his return wrote:[111] "Oranges, Lemons, Pine-aples, Plantanes, Peaches, Apricocks, Peares, Apels, in a word all sort of excellent Fruits will grow there in full perfection: you may sleepe whilst they are growing, after their setting or engrafting, there needes no more labour but your prayers, that they may prosper, and now and then an eye to prevent their casualties, wounds or diseases." No doubt Norwood is over enthusiastic in his praises and yet it is true that there were few pests of the peach at this time, most of these coming, one by one, with the development of the fruit-industry. About all that any fruit needed at this time was, to use a modern political phase, "watchful waiting."

Considering the agricultural efforts that must have been required to produce tobacco, then the medium of exchange at home and abroad, and of corn, which in Virginia was the staff of life, one wonders that fruit received the attention indicated by the following account written in 1656 of a still earlier period:[112] "The Country is full of gallant Orchards, and the fruit generally more luscious and delightful than here, witnesse the Peach and Quince, the latter may be eaten raw savourily, the former differs as much exceeds ours as the best relished apple we have doth the crabb, and of both most excellent and comfortable drinks are made." Perhaps the explanation of the popularity of fruits in Virginia is to be found in the statement that from fruits are made "most excellent and comfortable drinks." On the word of Captain John Smith we have it that "few of the upper-class planters drink any water."[113] Wine was not made in quantity in the colonies and liquors distilled from grains were not known so that thirst, in this case the mother of invention, caused the colonists to turn to peaches and apples for strong drink.

Prohibition was not preached in the colonies nor in the states until long after the Revolution and King Alcohol dominated every part of the New World. Distilling spirituous liquors from rye and corn seems not to have been practiced, if the art were known, until the beginning of the Nineteenth Century. The upper classes drank wine, but cider, perry, peach-vinegar and similar fermented fruit-juices were in common use by the middle and lower classes while the carousing population of the whole country, and there seems to have been many liberal tipplers, slaked their thirst with rum, apple-jack and peach-brandy. So much on drinking, not to point a moral or adorn a tale, but to bring out the fact that fruit-growing in America had its beginning and for two hundred years had almost its whole sustenance in the demand for strong drink. This is shown in almost every page of the horticultural literature of the times and in the laws of the colonies restricting prices and levying taxes on liquors made from fruits. Peaches were grown in quantities wherever they could be made to succeed in the colonies, not for the fruit itself, but for the making of peach-vinegar, a sort of cider, and peach-brandy, a distilled liquor.

By the end of the first hundred years in America the English seem to have brought orcharding to a fine state of perfection in Virginia, the peach succeeding then, by all accounts, rather better than now. Bruce[114] gives an admirable summing-up of orchard-conditions at the end of the period named: "In the closing years of the seventeenth century, there were few plantations in Virginia which did not possess orchards of apple and peach trees, pear, plum, apricot, and quince. The number of trees was often very large. The orchard of Robert Hide of York contained three hundred peach and three hundred apple trees. There were twenty-five hundred apple trees in the orchard of Colonel Fitzhugh. Each species of fruit was represented by many varieties; thus, of the apple, there were mains, pippins, russentens, costards, marigolds, kings, magitens and batchelors; of the pear, bergamy and warden. The quince was greater in size, but less aciduated than the English quince; on the other hand, the apricot and plum were inferior in quality to the English, not ripening in the same perfection. Cherries grew in notable abundance. So great was the productive capacity of the peach that some of the landowners planted orchards of the tree for the mere purpose of using the fruit to fatten their hogs; on some plantations, as many as forty bushels are said to have been knocked down to the swine in the course of a single season."

Treasure after treasure of experience and narrative may be found in tracing the history of the peach in Virginia but space permits only the references that best illuminate the development and culture of this fruit in America. Two accounts must serve to give an idea of the peach in Virginia in the Eighteenth Century. Robert Beverly, in his _History of Virginia_ gives a good idea of the culture, kinds and uses of peaches in the early part of the Eighteenth Century:[115] "Peaches, nectarines and apricots, as well as plumbs and cherries, grow there upon standard trees. They commonly bear in three years from the stone, and thrive so exceedingly, that they seem to have no need of grafting or inoculating, if any body would be so good a husband; and truly I never heard of any that did graft either plum, nectarine, peach or apricot in that country, before the first edition of this book."

"Peaches and nectarines I believe to be spontaneous, somewhere or other on that continent, for the Indians have, and ever had greater variety, and finer sorts of them than the English. The best sort of these cling to the stone, and will not come off clear, which they call plum nectarines, and plum peaches or clint stones. Some of these are twelve or thirteen inches in the girt. These sorts of fruits are raised so easily there, that some good husbands plant great orchards of them, purposely for their hogs; and others make a drink of them, which they call mobby, and either drink it as cider, or distill it off for brandy. This makes the best spirit next to grapes."

The text for the only other account we have space to publish for the period under consideration is found in Washington's diary for February 22, 1760. "Laid in part, the Worm of a fence around the Peach orchard." The information in Washington's short statement is inconsequential but from it we form a pleasant picture of peach-growing at Mount Vernon. Washington owned a distillery and in another place we learn that "the distiller made every fall a good deal of apple, peach and persimmon brandy." To supply the needs of the plantation in fruit and brandy, there must have been a considerable number of trees, all seedlings, but set in straight rows, for Washington, the surveyor, would have no botch work in aligning and spacing. The fence, the worm of which Washington was laying on his twenty-eighth birthday, if typical of the times, was of split walnut-rails, laid zigzag. Eventually it became trellised with wild grapes, Virginia creepers, honeysuckles and morning-glories. The corners grew up to sassafras, brambles and other plants of the region. In spring, we picture then, the pink-petalled trees, in the peach-orchard at Mount Vernon, making obeisance to the Father of his Country as he rode the rounds of the plantation; in summer the shady shrub-grown corners of the worm-fence, sweet-scented with honeysuckle or aromatic with sassafras, furnished refreshing resting places as Washington watched his harvest; later, the orchard, voluptuous with fruit, gave gustatory promises of products to eat and drink and dazzled the eye with autumn colors of Virginia creeper, wild grape and sassafras. The peach-orchard not only served the appetite at Mount Vernon but was one of the most picturesque spots on the plantation.

Let the foregoing accounts of Smith, Bruce and Beverly suffice to give status to early peach-growing in Virginia. They apply equally well to Maryland, these neighboring colonies, it will be remembered, being called by one of our authors, "Leah and Rachel or the Two Fruitful Sisters." Of the peach in the states to the south at least a few words ought to be said.

In the discussion of Indian peaches we have had a good account of the early history of the peach in the Carolinas by Lawson. We now show the status of peach-growing in this region at a later period. In an account of South Carolina and Georgia, said to have been written by General Oglethorpe, printed in London in 1733, we find the following:[116]

"Mulberries, both black and white, are natives of this soil, and are found in the woods, as are many other sorts of fruit trees of excellent kinds, and the growth of them is surprisingly swift; for a peach, apricot, or nectarine tree will, from the stone, grow to be a bearing tree in four or five years' time."

"They have oranges, lemons, apples and pears, besides the peach and apricot mentioned before. Some of these are so delicious that whoever tastes them will despise the insipid, watery taste of those we have in England; and yet such is the plenty of them that they are given to the hogs in great quantities."

A little later, 1740, Mr. Thomas Jones of Savannah wrote to Mr. John Lyde concerning the contents of his town-garden as follows:[117]

"As to our fruit, the most common are peaches and nectarines (I believe that I had a hundred bushels of the former this year in my little garden in town); we have also apples of divers sorts, chincopin nuts, walnut, chestnut, hickory, and ground nuts."

The third writer is Sir John Oldmixon who quotes a Mr. Archdale in regard to the fruits of Carolina. He writes:[118]

"Everything generally grows there that will grow in any part of Europe, there being already many sorts of fruits, as apples, pears, apricots, nectarines, etc. They that once taste of them will despise the watery, washy taste of those in England. There's such plenty of them that they are given to the hogs. In four or five years they come from a stone to be bearing trees."

The same author is worth quoting in regard to the early culture of the Melocoton peach in Virginia.[119] "Here is such plenty of peaches that they give them to their hogs; some of them, called malachotoons, are as big as a lemon and resemble it a little." The history of the word melocoton, by the way, is interesting. It comes from the Latin _melum cotoneum,_ literally, apple-quince. The corruption is of Spanish origin and in Spain "melocoton" is a common name for the peach. The word, however, is now common enough in English, no less than 29 variant spellings being found in the dictionaries and every extensive list of peaches having a number of varieties with melocoton as a prefix or an affix to the name.

Passing now to the northern colonies we find that the history of the peach in Pennsylvania begins with the history of the State. William Penn founded Philadelphia in 1682 and a year later, in describing the new country, names the peach as one of its assets:[120] "There are also very good peaches, and in great quantities; not an Indian plantation without them, but whether naturally here at first, I know not. However, one may have them by bushels for little; they make a pleasant drink; and I think not inferior to any peach you have in England, except the true Newington."

It would be hard to find a part of the earth better fitted in soil and climate for sure and abounding harvests of peaches than the Chesapeake peach-belt extending up through Maryland and taking in Delaware, New Jersey and eastern Pennsylvania. We may be sure, then, that if the Indians were growing peaches in the abundance described by Penn in what is now Philadelphia, peach-orchards were not less common in all of the Chesapeake belt. That the whole region was bountifully supplied with this delicious fruit when settled by whites is further indicated, however, in a letter written by Mahlon Stacy from the "Falls of the Delaware," New Jersey, in 1680, to his brother Revell in England. He says:[121]

"I have travelled through most of the places that are settled, and some that are not; and in every place I find the country very apt to answer the expectation of the diligent. I have seen orchards laden with fruit to admiration; their very limbs torn to pieces by the weight, and most delicious to the taste and lovely to behold. I have seen an apple tree from a pippin kernel yield a barrel of curious cider, and peaches in such plenty that some people took their carts a peach gathering; I could not but smile at the conceit of it; they are very delicate fruit, and hang almost like our onions that are tied on ropes."

We are told in Watson's Annals of Philadelphia[122] that one of the remarkable characteristics of Germantown, Pennsylvania, in 1700 was that the whole of the main street, one mile in length, "was fronted with blooming peach trees."

An account of peaches in the Delaware region as late as the middle of the Eighteenth Century shows that even then the peach was regarded as indigenous "like maize and tobacco." This quotation, too, is interesting because it gives a glimpse of cultural methods, kinds, uses and danger from frost. The author was a Swedish clergyman, a resident of the region for some years. He writes:[123]

"Peach trees stand within an enclosure by themselves; grow even in the stoniest places without culture. The fruit is the most delicious that the mouth can taste, and often allowable in fevers. One kind, called clingstones, are considered the best; in these the stones are not loose from the fruit as in the others. Many have peach orchards chiefly for the purpose of feeding their swine, which are not allowed to run at large. They first bloom, in March, the flowers coming out before the leaves, and are often injured by the frosts; they are ripe toward the close of August. This fruit is regarded as indigenous, like maize and tobacco; for as far as any Indians have been seen in the interior of the country these plants are found to extend."

Pressed for space, we must conclude the discussion of early peach-growing in this region by quoting an account of the industry as it existed in 1750 when the Swedish naturalist, Kalm, visited the colonies and spent some time in Pennsylvania and neighboring states. Writing of orchards he says:[124] "Every countryman, even a common peasant, has commonly an orchard near his house in which all sorts of fruit, such as peaches, apples, pears, cherries, and others, are in plenty. The peaches were now almost ripe. They are rare in Europe, particularly in Sweden, for in that country hardly any people besides the rich taste them. But here every countryman had an orchard full of peach trees, which were covered with such quantities of fruit, that we could scarcely walk in the orchard, without treading on those peaches which were fallen off; many of which were always left on the ground, and only part of them was sold in town, and the rest was consumed by the family and strangers; for every one that passed by, was at liberty to go into the orchard, and to gather as many of them as he wanted. Nay, this fine fruit was frequently given to the swine.

This fruit is, however, sometimes kept for winter use, and for this purpose they are prepared in the following manner. The fruit is cut into four parts, the stone thrown away, and the fruit put upon a thread, on which they are exposed to the sunshine in the open air, till they are sufficiently dry. They are then put into a vessel for winter. But this manner of drying them is not very good, because the rain of this season very easily spoils and putrifies them, whilst they hang in the open air. For this reason a different method is followed by others, which is by far the most eligible. The peaches are as before cut into four parts, are then either put upon a thread, or laid upon a board, and so hung up in the air when the sun shines. Being dried in some measure, or having lost their juice by this means, they are put into an oven, out of which the bread has but just been taken, and are left in it for a while. But they are soon taken out and brought into the fresh air; and after that they are again put into the oven, and this is repeated several times until they are as dry as they ought to be. For if they were dried up at once in the oven, they would shrivel up too much, and lose part of their flavour. They are then put up and kept for the winter. They are either baked into tarts and pyes, or boiled and prepared as dried apples and pears are in Sweden. Several people here dry and preserve their apples in the same manner as their peaches.

The peach trees have, as I am told, been first planted here by the Europeans. But at present they succeed very well, and require even less care than our apple and pear trees."

Kalm[125] also gives an account of the colonists' method of making peach-brandy, which, as we have seen, plays so important a part in the peach-industry of the times. Brandy-making, according to Kalm, was simplicity itself and it is not to be wondered that in those days of strong drink peach-brandy was popular. The following is Kalm's description: "They make brandy from peaches here, after the following method. The fruit is cut asunder, and the stones are taken out. The pieces of fruit are then put into a vessel, where they are left for three weeks or a month, till they are quite putrid. They are then put into the distilling vessel, and the brandy is made and afterwards distilled over again. This brandy is not for people who have a more refined taste, but it is only for the common kind of people, such as workmen and the like."

Kalm, travelling from Trenton to Princeton, found the country thickly settled and full of orchards:[126]

"During the greater part of the day we had very extensive corn fields on both sides of the road. * * * Near almost every farm was a spacious orchard full of peach and apple trees, and in some of them the fruit had fallen from the trees in such quantities as to cover nearly the whole surface. Part of it they left to rot, because they could not take it all in and consume it. Wherever we passed by we were always welcome to go into the fine orchards and gather our hats and pockets full of the choicest fruit, without the possessors so much as looking after it."

The soil and climate of Long Island and the lower reaches of the Hudson, similar to those of the Chesapeake peach-belt, are so well adapted to peaches that we may be sure that the early settlers in New York eked out their scanty fare with this fruit soon after settlements were made. Trade with the colonies to the south, where peaches were common before the Dutch were established on Manhattan Island, began almost immediately after the arrival of the Hollanders in America, and knowledge of the adaptability of peaches to conditions in the New World was no doubt quickly acquired from Virginia, if, indeed, the aborigines were not cultivating this fruit in the region as Penn found them doing on the site of Philadelphia. Yet careful search in the colonial records of New York shows no early accounts of peaches, there being few such accounts, by the way, of any agricultural product, no one having undertaken the task of describing the natural and agricultural resources of this State as was done by several able observers for Virginia and the New England states.

No doubt, however, orchard-planting as a general practice was long delayed in New York because of political and economic conditions. The Dutch came to America as traders and not as home-makers, and almost from the day they landed were in trouble with both their savage and their civilized neighbors so that actual or petty warfare prevented them from planting orchards until in 1647 when the reins of government were taken in hand by Peter Stuyvesant, a farmer as well as a soldier, who at once set about encouraging the planting of fields, gardens and orchards. He brought, we are told, fruits, flowers, farm and truck-crops from the neighboring colonies and Holland and these he not only planted on Manhattan Island but sent to the settlements up the Hudson. The peach may readily be grown in suitable soils from Albany down the river to New York, and, by the end of the Seventeenth Century, we are told by travelers, naturalists and missionaries that this fruit was in common cultivation by the whites and was even rudely tilled by the Indians of the Hudson Valley.

But, in eastern New York, away from the coast, the peach did not find the climate as congenial as in the colonies to the south and then, too, from the following record, the peach-borer early became troublesome. Kalm says:[127] "Peach-trees have often been planted here (Albany, New York) and never would succeed well. This was attributed to a worm which lives in the ground, and eats through the root, so that the tree dies. Perhaps the severity of the winter contributes much to it." We have another reference to show that winter-killing must have been a discouraging factor in peach-culture in this part of New York in early days as it is now. Cadwallader Colden, appointed first surveyor-general of New York in 1719, and in 1761 lieutenant-governor of the Province, a botanist of note, who had a patent of land in what is now Orange County, wrote in 1737 that cold had killed the peach-trees the previous winter.

The traveler who visits New York today finds many orchards on the Hudson but in them he sees comparatively few peaches. The peach is much more at home two hundred miles west about the Central Lakes and along the shores of Lake Ontario. Here, it is interesting to learn, peaches were grown in considerable quantities long before the region was settled by the whites--how long we have no record nor do we know much of the character of the fruit. John Bartram in his _Travels from Pensilvania to Onondago, Oswego and the Lake Ontario_, an account of a journey made in 1743, mentions apples, peaches, plums and grapes growing about the Indian villages passed through on his route. Whether these peaches came from the white settlements nearer the Atlantic, or at a much earlier date from the Indians to the South, or both, we cannot even surmise.

Sullivan's army, which came to this region in 1779 to chastise the Indians, found and destroyed considerable numbers of fruit-trees, among them many peaches. After Sullivan's raid the region was quickly settled by whites who, following the examples of the Indians, planted apples and peaches, the orchard soon becoming a prominent asset to every farm. Collections of pioneer papers frequently mention the great adaptability of these lake-regions to peaches. In Conover's _History of Kanadasaga and Geneva_[128] there are sixteen references to the peach-orchards about Seneca and Cayuga lakes in and about the year 1800. As in the South, the products seem to have been used chiefly in making peach-brandy.

David Thomas,[129] Aurora, Cayuga County, New York, was the pioneer horticulturist, fruit-grower and nurseryman in this part of the State and soon after coming to New York in 1805, we learn from several references to his orchards and nurseries in his own writings, began planting peaches. All of the named varieties from the South and East were tried in his orchard and if valuable were propagated and sold from his nursery. According to his son, John Jacob Thomas, the pomological writer, he had in 1830 "the most extensive and valuable collection of bearing trees west of the Hudson." Through him the western counties of the State were stocked with named peaches and other fruits.

Of peaches in the New England colonies, we need say but little. Except in favored parts of Connecticut and Massachusetts, this fruit was little grown in these northern colonies. It is not at all probable that New England Indians ever planted peaches and for a generation after the whites came the struggle for the necessities of life kept them from indulging in so great a luxury as a peach-orchard. Strong drink was as commonly used by the Puritans as by the Churchmen in Virginia and peach-brandy would have been as acceptable but it was easier to produce cider, and rum from the West Indies could be had with little trouble. Still, peaches were sparingly grown in the New England colonies.

The Massachusetts Company in 1629 sent peach-pits, along with seeds of other fruits, to be planted by the colonists.[130] Twelve years later George Fenwick, Saybrook, Connecticut, writes to Governor Winthrop that he is "prettie well storred with chirrie & peach trees."[131] Justice Paul Dudley,[132] who seems to have been the leading horticulturist in Massachusetts in his time, writes in 1726: "Our Peaches do rather excel those of _England_, and then we have not the Trouble or Expence of Walls for them; for our Peach Trees are all Standards, and I have had in my own Garden seven or eight Hundred fine Peaches of the Rare-ripes, growing at a Time on one Tree." From another statement made by Justice Dudley,[133] we learn that peaches were still being grown from the stone and may assume that budding was not known or so careful a horticulturist as our author would have mentioned it. He says: "Our Peach Trees are large and fruitful, and bear commonly in three Years from the Stone. I have one in my Garden of twelve Years Growth, that measures two Foot and an Inch in Girt a Yard from the Ground, which, two Years ago, bore me near a Bushel of fine Peaches."

SEEDLINGS GIVE WAY TO BUDDED TREES

About the close of the Eighteenth Century the planting of pits for permanent trees began to give way to budding. It does not appear who began budding peaches on this side of the Atlantic but the desirability of budded stock was discussed as early as 1736, for in that year we find the English botanist, Peter Collinson, urging his American colleague, John Bartram, to "graft Plums and Nectarines on Peach stocks."[134] The matter had evidently been under consideration before for Collinson tells Bartram "Pray try; I have great opinion of its succeeding."[135] Bartram is hard to convince and ten years later Collinson is still urging him to bud, for, in a letter of April 26, 1746, he writes, rather impatiently, "Though thou canst not see, yet I have told thee what inoculating a Peach stock may do."[136]

Probably the Princes, pioneer nurserymen in America, in their nursery at Flushing, Long Island, first began to bud the peach, for in their catalog of 1771 they offer 29 sorts though most of these appear to be types rather than varieties. Twenty years later they list 35 varieties with the statement that all "are inoculated." John Kenrick,[137] father of William Kenrick,[138] the pomological author, who for years was Prince's chief competitor, his nurseries being located at Newton, Massachusetts, began business in 1790 by planting a quantity of peach-stones the trees from which he did not bud. Four years later, we are told, he learned to bud and greatly extended his assortment of varieties, making a specialty of budded peach-trees.[139]

Until the middle of the next century, peaches were nevertheless commonly grown from the pits. It is probable that never before nor since, the world over, have seedling peaches been raised on so extended a scale as in America during the half-century following the Revolutionary war. The country between the Atlantic seaboard and the Mississippi was being rapidly settled and on nearly every farm from the Great Lakes to the Gulf, barring a few in the northernmost parts of this great area, peaches were planted. They furnished food not only for the pioneers but were used in fattening pigs and in the earlier part of the period, at any rate, were, with apples, the chief supply of ardent spirits which every farmer then kept on hand for daily use. There were millions of peach-trees in America before 1825 but until that time there were but few named varieties. Then the art of budding began to spread; nurseries sprang up; this vast collection of peaches was passed through the sieve of selection; local varieties quickly acquired fame; and, as means of communication developed, the new varieties began to be disseminated, until, in 1850, American nurseries were selling over 400 varieties, a number which at the close of the century had increased to over 1000.

THE CARE OF THE PEACH IN COLONIAL TIMES

Peach-growers, in the period under consideration, gave their trees much the same care as is given in the present time except that they did not spray. Pests were fewer and yet some were especially troublesome, notably the peach-borer, the remedies for which were as numerous as today. Curculio, then as now, almost prohibited the culture of nectarines. A rot, the brown-rot, without doubt, did much damage. Peach-yellows, as yet, was not the scourge it now is but, as we shall see, was well in evidence. There were faddists in those days as in these. Thomas Coulter of Bedford County, Pennsylvania, was one of the original "sod-mulchers"--at least year in and year out he inveighed against cultivation. He managed to get himself in all of the publications of the times for a period of a half-century. We find his method discussed in Volume V of the Transactions of the American Philosophical Society, in the _Domestic Encyclopaedia_[140] in 1803 and, as late as 1821, a full account was published in the _American Farmer_.[141] We quote the article in full, as it came out in the three publications named, as a record of the times and because it contains a number of novel ideas some of which may commend themselves to modern orchardists of the sod-mulch school who want a cheap and easy way of growing peaches.

"Transplant your peach-trees, as young as possible, where you mean them to stand; if, in the kernel, so much the better ... because, in that case, there will be no check of growth, which always injures peach-trees. Plant peach-trees 16 feet apart, both ways, except you would wish to take your waggon through the orchard to carry the peaches away; in that case, give 24 feet distance to every fifth row, one way, after transplanting. You may plough and harrow amongst your peach-trees, for two years, paying no regard to wounding or tearing them, so that you do not take them up by the roots. In the month of March, or April, in the third year after transplanting, _cut them all off by the ground_; plough and harrow amongst them as before, taking special care not to wound or tear them in the smallest degree, letting all the sprouts or scions grow that will grow; cut none away, supposing six or more should come from the old stump; the young scions will grow up to bearing trees on account of the roots being strong. Let no kind of beasts into peach-orchards, _hogs excepted_, for fear of wounding the trees; as the least wound will greatly injure the tree, by draining away that substance which is the life thereof; although the tree may live many years, the produce is not so great, neither is the fruit so good.

After the old stock is cut away, the third year after transplanting, the sprouts or scions will grow up, all round the old stump, from four to six in number; no more will come to maturity, than the old stump can support and nourish; the remainder will die before ever they bear fruit. These may be cut away, taking care not to wound any part of any stock, or the bark. The sprouts growing all round the old stump, when loaded with fruit will bend and rest on the ground in every direction, without injuring any of them, for many years, all of them being rooted in the ground, as tho' they had been planted. The stocks will remain tough, and the bark smooth for 2 years and upwards; if any of the sprouts or trees from the old stump should happen to split off, or die, cut them away, they will be supplied from the ground, by young trees, so that you will have trees from the same stump for 100 years, as I believe. I now have trees, 36, 20, 10, 5 and down to one year old, all from the same stump.

The young trees coming up, after any of the old trees split off or die, and are cut away, will bear fruit the second year; but this fruit will not ripen so easily as the fruit on the old trees from the same stem. Three years after the trees are cut off by the ground, they will be sufficiently large and bushy, to shade the ground so as to prevent grass of any kind from matting or binding the surface, so as to injure the trees; therefore; ploughing is useless, as well as injurious; useless, because nothing can be raised in the orchard, by reason the trees will shade all the ground, or nearly so; injurious, because either the roots, stocks or branches will be wounded: neither is it necessary ever to manure peach-trees, as manured trees will always produce less and worse fruit, than trees that are not manured; although by manuring your peach-trees, they will grow larger, and look greener and thicker in the boughs, and cause a thicker shade, yet on them will grow very little fruit, and that little will be of a very bad kind generally looking as green as the leaves, even when ripe, and later than those that never have been manured."

None of the varieties that we now grow was then cultivated. Taking the sorts described in 1800 we find that four were red-fleshed; eight, yellow-fleshed; thirty-four, white-fleshed; eighteen, freestones; nineteen, clingstones, and twelve nectarines. There were no flat, or Peento, peaches but a sort known as Venus's Nipple was seemingly a typical beaked peach.

In 1800, Baltimore was the best market for peaches in America and was near the Chesapeake peach-belt. We are fortunate in having a description of peach-growing around Baltimore at about that time. Richard Parkinson, an English farmer and agricultural writer, came to America to rent one of George Washington's farms in 1798. The two could not agree and Parkinson rented a farm near Baltimore on which was a peach-orchard. He published an account of his experiences in two very readable volumes and from this work we quote in part the story of his peach-orchard. Perhaps allowances should be made, for Parkinson seems to have been soured by failure and some of his expressions are such as might be expected from an opinionated Englishman undergoing new experiences in America just after the Revolution. Parkinson says:[142]

"It would astonish a stranger to see the quantity of fruit in these parts, which makes the country to look beautiful twice a-year, when the trees are in blossom, and when the fruit is on the trees ripe. But the fruit is chiefly for the use of hogs and can be applied to no better purpose.

On my farm at Orange-Hill, only three miles from Baltimore, the last year I was there, I sold all my peaches to two men at four pence per peck, and let them have a cart and a horse to take them into the city to sell, knowing I had only made four pence per peck on the average the year before, and gathered them myself. These men agreed to pick them, and feed the horse in town at their expence. It was the opinion of every one that they had got a great bargain, and many others wished they had had it. They picked about one-half of them, and carried them to Baltimore: but, alas! they gave up the business, saying they could not make wages, although they at first had said that they would certainly take every peach, intending, if the market should not suit, to carry them to the stills, &c. I was in hopes all this exertion would make this bargain successful, as four pence per peck would pay much better than to give them to hogs, as I have no knowledge of what number a hog will eat. Seeing this scheme frustrated, and thinking it a sin and a shame to see such a number of fine peaches rot on the ground, I mounted my horse and rode to the stills, as there were many small ones within three or four miles of me in the country. They have been erected for this use; but many of them are never used after the first year; and I am of the opinion that they will not pay expences. The men at the stills were civil enough; they offered to lend me the still, and let me find a man to work it, &c. or they would work it for me; but, from every information I could obtain, I found that my peaches would not more than pay the carriage to the stills and hardly that; and after selling them to the owners of the stills, they would not give me so much for my fruit, as would pay me for my trouble; nor will peaches pay the farmer, to be given to the hogs, if they be not so situated that the hogs can run where they are; and that happened not to be my case.

As a striking instance of the little profit of stills, Mr. O'Donnel, at Canton, had planted an orchard, of great extent, of red peaches, for the purpose of making peach-brandy. The red peach is reckoned much superior to any other for brandy. Although Mr. O'Donnel's orchard had grown to bear in great perfection and he had a still and the other necessary apparatus, the profit proved so small, that he suffered the whole to go waste, and his pigs consumed the produce; and, in the winter, rooted up all those fine peach trees, and planted the ground with Indian corn, having previously manured the land with dung from Baltimore for the purpose of an orchard. Now this gentleman had some hundreds of acres of woodlands unimproved in this plantation; therefore, the cause could not be for want of land.

My fine turnips, Indian corn, potatoes, &c. were in the field by the orchard without any fence. Indeed hogs are not allowed to run at large within five miles of Baltimore, by an act of assembly; and mine were too valuable to risk such a misfortune; and especially as I was a great hog-shooter myself, it would have been fine diversion for any of my neighbours to have shot one of my fifty-dollar pigs. Seeing that these plants would not succeed, all that remained was to fatten my own hogs with them. I had but seven hogs; and they would have employed a man with horse and cart half a day to feed them; for, after a short time, they will only eat the best peaches, and refuse the others as a man would. I found this plan would not answer; and the consequence was, that, after every trial and exertion, they rotted on the ground. Now my farm was so situated that the great road through the heart of the country went through it, five or six stage-coaches, and great numbers of other carriages of all kinds. In all probability some of my own countrymen as merchants (for there begin to be many of these gentlemen to settle their accounts with the American merchants, and I suppose they will increase) seeing this waste committed, would, on returning to England, relate their story in this way--That when at the tavern at Baltimore on the same day, the fruit-people were asking eleven pence apiece for peaches. An Englishman says to himself, 'What idle fools those Americans are! and I think all the English, when they get to America, are as bad: but, when I get there, I will set them the example.' But when there, he finds himself much disappointed, and does not know how it is that he does not increase in riches, while neither himself nor his family enjoys any comfort. He at last finds out that the Americans are not a set of fools as he once thought: and, as he must have a name for them, perhaps he calls them rogues; which, if Lord Chesterfield was right in his observation, pleases a man the best of the two.

When I took this farm, I had not a doubt, that, by some extraordinary exertion, I should be able to make something handsome from peaches, and so near Baltimore. Before I took the farm, when I enquired how peaches sold in the market, perhaps they would tell me eleven pence apiece, and eleven pence a peck on the same day. That used to stagger me very much: but it is so: and the man who offers you a fine Newington peach for eleven pence or a five-penny bit, sells but few each day; and lives, although very poorly, at a very great expence; consequently his profit must be great on each article. The man who sells the peaches at eleven pence each, will not grow rich by his business, any more than the grower. Then we come to the calculation of my profit at four pence per peck, which is the best and greatest price. Could the scheme be put in execution, it will, generally speaking, require two men and one horse and cart each day, to pick thirty pecks and carry them to market; and thirty pecks are more than any white man can sell one day with another. A black man is much better for this business than a white man; although they are in general ignorant, they are impudent: thirty pecks of peaches, at four pence per peck, is just ten shillings per day for peaches; and the two men's wages are worth, at that season of the year, one dollar per day each, and one pint of whiskey, which will be sixteen shillings for the men: the cart and horse are worth one dollar and a half per day; but you could not hire it for less than two dollars. Now the expences on this business are one pound seven shillings and three pence per day, and the produce is ten shillings. But as I sold them, I made profit each day on thirty pecks of peaches two shillings and nine pence: the reader may plainly see that there could not be any thing done better. This shews in this part of the work where I am on the Eastern Shore, one hundred miles and upwards from market, that the reader will be convinced the cherries and peaches pay the best for hogs."

ADAPTABILITY AND VARIABILITY IN THE PEACH

In the preceding pages our narrative has flitted from continent to continent and country to country in a belt encircling the earth. Few other fruits are found under such varied conditions and over such extended areas. We have seen that peaches are found wild and cultivated over much of Japan; as far north as Vladivostock in Korea; once a wild inhabitant of some part of China it is now cultivated in nearly every section of that vast empire where agriculture is an industry; the trees are so abundant and so much at home in the orchards and forests of the Turkestans and Persia as to have given rise to the belief that they have always grown there. While not so common as in Asia, yet peaches thrive in all of southern Europe and readily submit to artificial culture in pots and on walls in northern European latitudes. Coming to America with the first Spaniards, the peach found such congenial surroundings that it spread rapidly, freely and widely, leading botanists three centuries later to call it a native. In the fruit-areas of the United States, after two centuries of cultivation, though sometimes a luxury and the crop often a speculation, the peach is so perennially plentiful that it is to be found, fresh, canned or evaporated, in every home in the land and the species is represented in American pomologies by over 1000 sorts which have originated in this country.

However, in tracing the history of the peach from China to America, we have not wholly shown the range of adaptability of this fruit. The peach has become adapted to the clear skies, strong light, long seasons and hot climate of northern Africa, where, under modified cultural treatment, it is a common fruit in Egypt[143] and the other states bordering on the Mediterranean. It thrives on the islands in the Mediterranean and on those of the North Temperate zone almost to the tropics in the Atlantic and the Pacific, as the Azores, Canaries, West Indies and Hawaiian group. As long ago as 1649 the Azores were famous for peaches and Colonel Norwood, author of _A Voyage to Virginia_,[144] in a gustatory reminiscence tells us that they were of so good quality that he "did not fail to visit and revisit them in the dead of night to satisfy a ravenous appetite nature has too prodigally given me for that species." In the sub-tropic climate of Guadeloupe Islands, French West Indies, there is a peach peculiar to the region differing in shape, flavor and in heat-resisting qualities from the common run of this fruit.[145]