Page:Once a Week June to Dec 1863.pdf/242

232 to fishing in that lake again, or even rowing on those waters, I could not bear to think of it. So I sold my land for what little I could get, and soon fixed myself here where you see me. Thank God, I have done very well, and in the course of time perhaps—but we can’t forget our lost child.”

This was the strange history I heard from Reuben Baldwin—an unpolished man, but a man of excellent sense and generous warm feelings. With such a gem of a farm as he is now in, with such an admirable partner in his joys and sorrows, and, above all, with the blessings of Providence, Reuben Baldwin may yet live to be a happy, if not a rich man.

I took leave of the worthy couple with the painful feeling that I was not likely ever to see them again, or even to make them any return for the kindness and hospitality they had bestowed on me.

It is not my intention to describe my meeting with my New York friend, or the business which brought us together, for there was nothing in it that could afford interest to any third person.

Two days after I left Reuben Baldwin’s log-house in the bush, I was again in Cincinnati, where I made it my first business to procure a handsome copy of “Izaak Walton’s Complete Angler,” which I sent with my grateful remembrance to the Fisherman of Lake Sunapee.

in our great cities, the first stage of whose acquaintance with cranberries is mostly the discovery of them as inmates of a barrel, the label of which announces that it is freshly arrived from Norway, Russia, or America, might be expected to feel some surprise on learning, for the first time, that the fruit thus constantly identified with foreign associations is not only indigenous to our own country, but very abundant in many parts of it. The surprise would, however, be mingled perhaps with another feeling, not very complimentary to their rural compatriots, on finding further that our immense imports, amounting, some years ago, to as much as 30,000 gallons per annum, paying a duty of sixpence per gallon, are not so much a supplement to native supplies as a substitute for them, and that while Russian boors and American settlers find a profitable employment in collecting cranberries for the English markets, our own poor villagers suffer vast quantities of these berries year by year to rot ungathered on British bushes. In Scotland especially is this the case, and their countryman, Intosh, justly deplores that some among the more enlightened class do not direct the attention of the Scotch peasantry to the wastefully neglected advantages nature has afforded them with regard to this fruit, and incite their industry by pointing out the best markets and easiest mode of transport. How much might be gained in this way may be judged from an old account of Longton in Cumberland, where cranberry-gathering, being undertaken in earnest, the sale of them amounted ordinarily to 20l. or 30l. on each market-day throughout the season, which extended over five or six weeks, many people there even making wine from them. It is true that cranberries, which, therefore in Gerard’s time bore the name of “fen-berries,” and are termed by the Dutch “fen-grapes,” thrive only in damp and swampy ground, and that in a country where population is always increasing, and improvement progressing, bogs and marshes are by no means desirable features, nor yet likely to be permanent ones; but so long as soil of this kind is in existence, there is so much the more reason for turning it to the best account by making use of what it does produce, or if not brought forth spontaneously, of planting it with what it is fitted to produce, for wherever there is water there cranberries will thrive, and many witnesses depose to the fact that, with very little cost or trouble, a cranberry plantation may be established on the margin of any pond even in the most barren waste. All that is necessary is to form round its border a bed of bog-earth, kept in its place by a few boards and stakes, for this kind of soil retains moisture longer than any other, and is so indispensable to the cranberry plant that, though it will sometimes grow in bog-earth away from any pond, not even dwelling beside a pond can induce it to thrive unless rooted in bog-earth. A few bushes planted in such a situation will send out runners, which, in the course of a few years, will spread over the whole bed, and never requiring any culture or attention, they will continue year after year to bring forth an abundant and regular crop of fruit, unaffected by bad weather and unspoiled by insect ravages. Sir Joshua Banks was the first to try this experiment, near a pond in his grounds at Spring Grove; but though the result was eminently successful, it has been very little followed in this country. In New England, however, many low-lying, rank meadows are turned to very profitable account by being thus planted, for twenty feet of land will yield three or four bushels of fruit annually, the average value of the produce being about one dollar per bushel, and at New York they will even sell for three or four dollars a bushel; while the only attention they require is simply to be gathered when ripe, and a labourer can gather, with the aid of a “rake,” as much as thirty bushels in a day. They grow wild in greatest abundance in the neighbourhood of Barnstaple, United States; and here the gathering is made an annual festival, a day for it being appointed by the authorities, when the greater part of the population go forth, armed with implements called “cranberry rakes,” to collect the crop, a fixed proportion of which is always made over to the town as a municipal right.

The generic name of the cranberry, Oxycoccus, is derived from the Greek oxys, sharp, and kokkos, a berry, alluding to the acidity of the fruit. This genus includes several species, our native English kind being termed palustris, and the common American sort macrocarpus; but they do not differ very strikingly, the chief distinction being that the berries of the latter are larger, while the flavour of ours is mostly preferred. That the American kind are thought inferior may sometimes be due to the damaging influence of the voyage they must undergo before we receive them; but it is not always so, since that species has