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Updated: June 8, 2025
I could wish that the chinquapin, as well as the chestnut, was included among the trees that enlightened Americans would plant along roadsides and lanes, with other fruit trees; the specific secondary purpose, after the primary enjoyment of form, foliage and flower, being to let the future passer-by eat freely of that fruit provided by the Creator for food and pleasure, and costing no more trouble or expense than the purely ornamental trees more frequently planted.
I had passed the weirs of the Paspaheghs, and no man was there. I sat and smoked before the lodge, and the maidens brought me chinquapin cakes and pohickory; for Nantauquas is a prince and a welcome guest to all save Opechancanough. The old men smoked, with their eyes upon the ground, each seeing only the days when he was even as Nantauquas.
The rest of the vegetation was more or less familiar, I believe: the obtuse-leaved milkweed, of which I had never seen so much before; three sorts of goldenrod, including abundance of the fragrant odora; two kinds of yellow gerardia, and, in the lower lands at the western end of the valley, the dainty rose gerardia, just now coming into bloom; the pretty Polygala polygama, pretty, but not in the same class with the rose gerardia; ladies' tresses; bayberry; sweet fern; crisp-leaved tansy; beach grass; huckleberry bushes, for whose liberality I had frequent occasion to be thankful; bear oak; chinquapin; chokeberry; a single vine of the Virginia creeper; wild carrot; wild cherry; the common brake, these and doubtless many more were there, for I made no attempt at a full catalogue.
The daughter was expected to send to the mother country sassafras root, bay berries, puccoon, sarsaparilla, walnut, chestnut, and chinquapin oil, wine, silk grass, beaver cod, beaver and otter skins, clapboard of oak and walnut, tar, pitch, turpentine, and powdered sturgeon.
Both chestnut and chinquapin are beautiful ornamental trees; and some of the newer chestnut hybrids, of parentage between the American and the European species, are as graceful as the most highly petted lawn trees of the nurserymen.
But the serenity of Peter's retrospect was unmarred by any passing cloud. Those who dwell in darkness find it easier to remember the bright places in their lives. "Yas, suh, yas, suh, dem watermillions," he repeated with unction, "I kin tas'e 'em now! Dey wuz de be's watermillions dat evuh growed, suh dey doan raise none lack 'em dese days no mo'. An' den dem chinquapin bushes down by de swamp!
The "mast" of the beech-tree, the nut of the hickory, the fruit of the Chinquapin oak, the acorn, and many other seeds and berries, furnish them with food. Many roots besides, and grasses, contribute to sustain them, and they make an occasional meal off a snake whenever they can get hold of one.
It was as though King Edward had condescended to mingle with ten-spots of a different suit; or Joe Gans had casually strolled in to look over the Tuskegee School; or Mr. Shaw, of England, had accepted an invitation to read selections from "Rena, the Snow-bird" at an unveiling of the proposed monument to James Owen O'Connor at Chinquapin Falls, Mississippi.
The summer green of the chinquapin burrs had given place to a richer coloring; the sumac and blackberry bushes flushed red in the sunlight.
Even from the main road, the track, as it led off through the overhanging woods with thick underbrush of chinquapin bushes, appeared to the boys to have something strange about it, though they had at other times walked it from end to end. Still, they entered boldly, clutching their guns.
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