"The situation of
Bladensburgh is unhealthy, among swamps which surround it on all sides, and
every fall obstinate fevers spread among the inhabitants of the region, which
on the other hand is rich in manifold beautiful plants. Negroes are beginning
to be more numerously kept here, and the people show already a strong tincture
of southern ease and behavior. Also several plants are grown here which farther
to the north are scarcely seen. Cotton wool (Gossypium herbaceum) and sweet potatoes (Convolvulus Battatas) [sic] are raised by each family sufficiently for
its needs. The blacks raise Been nuts (Arachishypogaea) this is a pretty hardy growth, which at all events stands a few
cold nights without hurt. The thin shells of the nuts, or more properly the
husks, are broken, and the kernels planted towards the end of April in good
light soil, perhaps a span apart. They must then be diligently weeded, and when
they begin to make a growth of stems all the filaments or joints are covered
with earth. After the blooming time, the pistils and young seed cases bury
themselves in the ground and mature under the earth which is continually heaped
upon them. The kernels have an oily taste and roasted are like cacao. With this
view the culture of them for general use has been long recommended in the
Philosophical Transactions, and the advantages of making this domestic oil
plainly enough pointed out, but without the desired result. The wild chesnuts
[sic] growing so generally in all the forests might yield a fruit quite as
useful for the whole of America. It is known that in certain parts of Europe
the chesnut is of almost as important a use as the jaka, or breadfruit tree.
The native chesnut tree is found everywhere in America but is not regarded
except as furnishing good timber for fence rails. Its fruit is indeed small,
dry and inferior in taste to the European great chesnuts, but in Italy these
are had only from inoculated trees, the fruit of the wild chesnut there, as in
America, being neither large nor agreeable in taste. By inoculation, then,
there could be had quite as fine great chesnuts here. But without that, on
account of its great usefulness this fruit has received some attention from the
Americans who eat it boiled and roasted, convert it into meal and bread, and
fresh shelled and ground use it as a kind of soap with plenty of water.
Unfavorable
weather and the hope of finding in the swamps along the several branches of the
Potowmack certain other particular seeds or plants made our stay here also a
few days longer. But we found very little we had not seen. However we were
fortunate enough here to obtain a stock of acorns and nuts which elsewhere had
failed. These with some other seeds we shipped on board a brigantine bound from
Georgetown to London, but which never came to port."
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Preservation Services LLC Final 6-02-2013
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