Our viands

We have seen and tasted another preparation of this fruit, and of peaches, in the form of paste. The fruit is peeled, slightly boiled without water, mashed, and spread out very thin on buttered boards or sheets of paper, dried in the sun, and folded up like paper, forming a pleasant refreshment in travelling, or at any time when a little fruit is desired and not otherwise obtainable. It need hardly be said that all these fruits, although brought to great perfection by careful cultivation in England, are natives of sunnier climes. The peach and nectarine, which are so closely allied as to be virtually the same fruit — although one has a smooth coat and the other a rough one — belong to the same botanical family as the almond, and are supposed to have been brought originally from STONE FRUITS AND BERRIES 195 Persia by the Romans. The peach has been cultivated in England since the sixteenth century, and seems to have been introduced wherever civilised man has appeared. The natives of South Africa are indebted to the traveller Burchell for it, he having given a bag of peach stones as the best present he could think of, to the chief of the Bachapins, upon which he remarks, ' Nor did I fail to impress on his mind a just idea of their value and nature, by telling him that they would produce trees which would continue every year to yield, without further trouble, abundance of large fruit of a more agreeable flavour than any which grew in the country of the Bachapins.' Whether the natives appre- ciated the wisdom of the benevolent traveller in making this gift to them, and whether they continue to cultivate the fruit, is not known ; but the colonists of South Africa generally do so largely, finding the tree very easily reared and the fruit excellent. It is not, however, indigenous to South Africa, although a small apricot is found growing wild there. The country recently traversed by the pioneer force of the Chartered Company would seem at one time to have been quite a garden of fruits, as the following extract from a letter of one of the men shows : — ' I called the country around these parts (Matabeleland, about one hundred and fifty miles from Mount Hampden) the land of fruits, for the whole place is like a great orchard of fruit trees growing wild. Although the winter season (July), many are loaded with fruit. Imagine riding for miles and miles under the shade of wild orange trees, branches weighed down with fruit, and more of others than I can name — wild grapes, guavas, limes, plums, apples, and pomegranates — a 196 OUR VIANDS veritable garden of Eden, and this under a cloudless sky and delightful climate.'