A Settler Goes Out With His Gun, And In A Quarter Of An Hour
Brings In Half A Dozen Birds Which In The New York Market Would Cost Two
Dollars A Pair.
At one place where we stopped to dine, they gave us a kind
of pie which seemed to me an appropriate dessert for a dinner of
prairie-hens.
It was made of the fruit of the western crab-apple, and was
not unpalatable. The wild apple of this country is a small tree growing in
thickets, natural orchards. In spring it is profusely covered with
light-pink blossoms, which have the odor of violets, and at this season it
is thickly hung with fruit of the color of its leaves.
Another wild fruit of the country is the plum, which grows in thickets,
plum-patches, as they are called, where they are produced in great
abundance, and sometimes, I am told, of excellent quality. In a drive
which I took the other day from Princeton to the alluvial lands of the
Bureau River, I passed by a declivity where the shrubs were red with the
fruit, just beginning to ripen. The slope was sprinkled by them with
crimson spots, and the odor of the fruit was quite agreeable. I have eaten
worse plums than these from our markets, but I hear that there is a later
variety, larger and of a yellow color, which is finer.
I spoke in my last of the change caused in the aspect of the country by
cultivation.
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