"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."
Public-domain text, read in full here on John Shaqi.
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