"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."