CHAPTER II.
_Of the Fruit Trees of_ Louisiana.
I shall now proceed to give an account of the fruit trees of this colony, and shall begin with the Vine, which is so common in Louisiana, that whatever way you walk from the sea coast for five hundred leagues northwards, you cannot proceed an hundred steps without meeting with one; but unless the vine-shoots should happen to grow in an exposed place, it cannot be expected that their fruit should ever come to perfect maturity. The trees to which they twine are so high, and so thick of leaves, and the intervals of underwood are so filled with reeds, that the sun cannot warm the earth, or ripen the fruit of this shrub. I will not undertake to describe all the kinds of grapes which this country produces; it is even impossible to know them all; I shall only speak of three or four.
The first sort that I shall mention does not perhaps deserve the name of a grape, although its wood and its leaf greatly resemble the vine. This shrub bears no bunches, and you hardly ever see upon it above two grapes together. The grape in substance and colour is very like a violet damask plum, and its stone, which is always single, greatly resembles a nut. Though not very relishing, it has not however that disagreeable sharpness of the grape that grows in the neighbourhood of New Orleans.
On the edge of the savannahs or meadows we meet with a grape, the shoots of which resemble those of the Burgundy {209} grape. They make from this a tolerable good wine, if they take care to expose it to the sun in summer, and to the cold in winter. I have made this experiment myself, and must say that I never could turn it into vinegar.
There is another kind of grape which I make no difficulty of classing with the grapes of Corinth, commonly called currants. It resembles them in the wood, the leaf, the tree, the size, and the sweetness. Its tartness is owing to its being prevented from ripening by the thick shade of the large trees to which it twines. If it were planted and cultivated in an open field, I make not the least doubt but it would equal the grape of Corinth, with which I class it.
Muscadine grapes, of an amber colour, of a very good kind, and very sweet, have been found upon declivities of a good exposure, even so far north as the latitude of 31 degrees. There is the greatest probability that they might make excellent wine of these, as it cannot be doubted but the grapes might be brought to great perfection in this country, since in the moist soil of New Orleans, the cuttings of the grape which some of the inhabitants of that city brought from France, have succeeded extremely well, and afforded good wine.
As a proof of the fertility of Louisiana, I cannot forbear mentioning the following fact; an inhabitant of New Orleans having planted in his garden a few twigs of this Muscadine vine, with a view of making an arbour of them, one of his sons, with another negro boy, entered the garden in the month of June, when the grapes are ripe, and broke off all the bunches they could find. The father, after severely chiding the two boys, pruned the twigs that had been broken and bruised; and as several months of summer still remained, the vine pushed out new shoots, and new bunches, which ripened and were as good as the former.
The Persimmon, which the French of the colony call Placminier, very much resembles our medlar-tree in its leaf and wood: its flower, which is about an inch and a half broad, is white, and is composed of five petals; its fruit is about the size of a large hen's egg; it is shaped like our medlar, but its substance is sweeter and more delicate. This fruit is astringent; {210} when it is quite ripe the natives make bread of it, which they keep from year to year; and the bread has this remarkable property that it will stop the most violent looseness or dysentery; therefore it ought to be used with caution, and only after physic. The natives, in order to make this bread, squeeze the fruit over fine sieves to separate the pulp from the skin and the kernels. Of this pulp, which is like paste or thick pap, they make cakes about a foot and a half long, a foot broad, and a finger's breadth in thickness: these they dry in an oven, upon gridirons, or else in the sun; which last method of drying gives a greater relish to the bread. This is one of their articles of traffick with the French.
Their plum-trees are of two sorts: the best is that which bears violet-coloured plums, quite like ours, which are not disagreeable, and which certainly would be good if they did not grow in the middle of woods. The other kind bears plums of the colour of an unripe cherry, and these are so tart that no body can eat them; but I am of opinion they might be preserved like gooseberries; especially if pains were taken to cultivate them in open grounds. The small cherries, called the Indian cherry, are frequent in this country. Their wood is very beautiful, and their leaves differ in nothing from those of the cherry tree.
The Papaws are only to be found far up in Higher Louisiana. These trees, it would seem, do not love heat; they do not grow so tall as the plum-trees; their wood is very hard and flexible; for the lower branches are sometimes so loaded with fruit that they hang perpendicularly downwards; and if you unload them of their fruit in the evening, you will find them next morning in their natural erect position. The fruit resembles a middle-sized cucumber; the pulp is very agreeable and very wholesome; but the rind, which is easily stripped off, leaves on the fingers so sharp an acid, that if you touch your eye with them before you wash them, it will be immediately inflamed, and itch most insupportably for twenty-four hours after.
The natives had doubtless got the peach-trees and fig-trees from the English colony of Carolina, before the French {211} established themselves in Louisiana. The peaches are of the kind which we call Alberges; are of the size of the fist, adhere to the stone, and contain so much water that they make a kind of wine of it. The figs are either blue or white; are large and well enough tasted. Our colonists plant the peach stones about the end of February, and suffer the trees to grow exposed to all weathers. In the third year they will gather from one tree at least two hundred peaches, and double that number for six {212} or seven years more, when the tree dies irrecoverably. As new trees are so easily produced, the loss of the old ones is not in the least regretted.
The orange-trees and citron-trees that were brought from Cape François have succeeded extremely well; however I have seen so severe a winter that those kinds of trees were entirely frozen to the very trunk. In that case they cut the trees down to the ground, and the following summer they produced shoots that were better than the former. If these trees have succeeded in the flat and moist soil of New Orleans, what may we not expect when they are planted in better soil, and upon declivities of a good exposure? The oranges and citrons are as good as those of other countries; but the rind of the orange in particular is very thick, which makes it the better for a sweet-meat.
There is plenty of wild apples in Louisiana, like those in Europe; and the inhabitants have got many kind of fruit trees from France, such as apples, pears, plums, cherries, &c. which in the low grounds run more into wood than fruit; the few I had at the Natches proved that high ground is much more suited to them than the low.
The blue Whortle-berry is a shrub somewhat taller than our largest gooseberry bushes, which are left to grow as they please. Its berries are of the shape of a gooseberry, grow single, and are of a blue colour: they taste like a sweetish gooseberry, and when infused in brandy it makes a good dram. They attribute several virtues to it, which, as I never experienced, I cannot answer for. It loves a poor gravelly soil.
Louisiana produces no black mulberries: but from the sea to the Arkansas, which is an extent of navigation upon the river of two hundred leagues, we meet very frequently with three kinds of mulberries; one a bright red, another perfectly white, and a third white and sweetish. The first of these kinds is very common, but the two last are more rare. Of the red mulberries they make excellent vinegar, which keeps a long time, provided they take care in the making of it to keep it in the shade in a vessel well stopped, contrary to the practice in France. They make vinegar also of bramble berries, but this {213} is not so good as the former. I do not doubt but the colonists at present apply themselves seriously to the cultivation of mulberries, to feed silk-worms, especially as the countries adjoining to France, and which supplied us with silk, have now made the exportation of it difficult.
The olive-trees in this colony are surprisingly beautiful. The trunk is sometimes a foot and a half diameter, and thirty feet high before it spreads out into branches. The Provençals settled in the colony affirm, that its olives would afford as good an oil as those of their country. Some of the olives that were prepared to be eat green, were as good as those of Provence. I have reason to think, that if they were planted on the coasts, the olives would have a finer relish.
They have great numbers and a variety of kinds of walnut-trees in this country. There is a very large kind, the wood of which is almost as black as ebony, but very porous. The fruit, with the outer shell, is of the size of a large hen's egg: the shell has no cleft, is very rough and so hard as to require a hammer to break it. Though the fruit be very relishing, yet it is covered with such a thick film, that few can bestow the pains of separating the one from the other. The natives make bread of it, by throwing the fruit into water, and rubbing it till the film and oil be separated from it. If those trees were engrafted with the French walnut, their fruit would probably be improved.
Other walnut-trees have a very white and flexible wood. Of this wood the natives make their crooked spades for hoeing their fields. The nut is smaller than ours, and the shell more tender; but the fruit is so bitter that none but perroquets can put up with it.
The Hicori bears a very small kind of nut, which at first sight one would take for filberts, as they have the same shape and colour, and their shell is as tender, but within they are formed like walnuts. They have such an excellent relish, that the French make fried cakes of them as good as those of almonds.
Louisiana produces but a few filberts, as the filbert requires a poor gravelly soil which is not to be met with in this {214} province, except in the neighbourhood of the sea, especially near the river Mobile.
The large chesnuts are not to be met with but at the distance of one hundred leagues from the sea, and far from rivers in the heart of the woods, between the country of the Chactaws and that of the Chicasaws. The common chesnuts succeed best upon high declivities, and their fruit is like the chesnuts that grow in our woods. There is another kind of chesnuts, which are called the Acorn chesnuts, as they are shaped like an acorn, {215} and grow in such a cup. But they have the colour and taste of a chesnut; and I have often thought that those were the acorns which the first of men were said to have lived upon.
The Sweet-Gum, or Liquid-Ambar (Copalm) is not only extremely common, but it affords a balm, the virtues of which are infinite. Its bark is black and hard, and its wood so tender and supple, that when the tree is felled you may draw from the middle of it rods of five or six feet in length. It cannot be employed in building or furniture, as it warps continually; nor is it fit for burning on account of its strong smell; but a little of it in a fire yields an agreeable perfume. Its leaf is indented with five points like a star.
I shall not undertake to particularize all the virtues of this Sweet-Gum or Liquid-Ambar, not having learned all of them from the natives of the country, who would be no less surprised to find that we used it only as a varnish, than they were to see our surgeons bleed their patients. This balm, according to them, is an excellent febrifuge; they take ten or a dozen drops of it in gruel fasting, and before their meals; and if they should take a little more, they have no reason to apprehend any danger. The physicians among the natives purge their patients before they give it them. It cures wounds in two days without any bad consequences: it is equally sovereign for all kinds of ulcers, after having applied to them for some days a plaster of bruised ground-ivy. It cures consumptions, opens obstructions; it affords relief in the colic and all internal diseases; it comforts the heart; in short, it contains so many virtues, that they are every day discovering some new property that it has.