Page:Popular Science Monthly Volume 71.djvu/424

world. Furthermore be was a botanist, and had an eye for the various kinds of trees, the remarks upon which, and upon the great variety of plants that he observed and collected, occupy a considerable portion of the narrative. Pie tells us in one place that grass formerly grew in the woods which were then quite open, with little or none of the underwood growth which characterize our woodlands to-day. The settled parts of the country must have had a wild and shaggy look, even in Kalm's time, for he speaks of the stumps of trees in the corn-fields—a real backwoods' picture—and notes that the farms were widely separated from one another:

The greatest part of the land, between these farms so distant from each other, was overgrown with woods, consisting of tall trees. However, there was a fine space between the trees, so that one could ride on horseback without inconvenience in the woods, and even with a cart in most places; and the ground was very plain and uniform at the same time. . . . In some parts of the country the trees were thick and tall, but in others I found large tracts covered with young trees, only twenty, thirty, or forty years old; these tracts, I am told, the Indians formerly had their little plantations in. . . . The woods consisted chiefly of several species of oak. and of hiccory.

An old Swede, Nils Gustafson by name, ninety-one years of age, told Kalm that

he could very well remember the state of the country, at the time when the Dutch possessed it, and in what circumstances it was before the arrival of the English. He added, that he had brought a great deal of timber to Philadelphia, at the time it was built. He still remembered to have seen a great forest on the spot where Philadelphia now stands.^[1]

Kalm had a practical turn of mind. Being a professor of "Œconomy," he was at all times on the look-out for the uses of things. Whatever contributed to human welfare seemed to him of the first moment. What a particular plant or tree yielded in the way of dyes, or food, or timber, or remedies against sickness; the nature of soils, the qualities of rocks and stones for building purposes; the thrift, or want of it, on the part of the people; how they clothed and housed themselves; how prolific they were, what they ate, how they cooked their food, how they cared for their stock and crops—all such matters find a conspicuous place in his pages. And so he goes rambling delightfully on—describing and commenting upon everything that he saw, or even heard of—here about wine-making, or fences, or s)ring-houses; there about some curious custom, or remarkable occunrence. He was forever putting a question—"quere," as he called it—"where did the Swedes here settled get their several sorts of corn, and likewise their fruit-trees and kitchen-herbs?" "Whence did the English in Pensylvania and New Jersey get their cattle?" "Where did these Swallows

---

1. According to Heckwelder, this site was called by the Indians Kùequenáku, which means the "grove of the long pine trees."