"Our apples are without doubt as good as those of England, and much fairer to look to, and so are the pears, but we have not got all the sorts. 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. Our people, of late years, have run so much upon orchards, that in a village near Boston, consisting of about forty families, they made near three thousand barrels of cyder. This was in the year 1721. And in another town of two hundred families, in the same year I am credibly informed they made near ten thousand barrels. Our peach trees are large and fruitful, and bear commonly in three years from the stone. Our common cherries are not so good as the Kentish cherries of England, and we have no Dukes or Heart cherries, unless in two or three gardens." [25] _Mass. Hist. Soc. Collections_ 1st Ser. =I=:118. [26] _Mass. Records_ =I=:24. [27] _Mass. Hist. Collections_ 3d Ser. =23=:337. [28] _Mass. Hist. Collections_ 4th Ser. =VI=:499. [29] Abridgment =6=:pt. =II=:341, in _Hist. Mass. Hort. Soc._ 14-15. 1829-1878. CHERRIES IN NEW YORK Though settled at about the same time and having a more congenial climate, New York made progress in fruit-growing more slowly than Massachusetts. The early Dutch settlers in New York were transient traders and not home makers. Actual settlement with homes in view did not begin until after the historical bargain in which thrifty Peter Minuit had acquired Manhattan Island for $24.00 and the country became New Amsterdam. But troublesome times followed under the rule of Minuit, Wouter Van Twiller and Kieft, quarrels and actual war, or the fear of it, with colonists to the north and south as well as with the savages, preventing the planting of orchards and farms until in 1647 when the reins of government were taken in hand by Peter Stuyvesant.