[page 140]

100.

100.

In this region, the province of Virginia[227], all sorts of plants that are found in Europe can grow: apples, cherries, pears, peaches, etc. but there are no quetsches[228]. As for grains, there is wheat and other grains of this sort, but not much because the English think nothing of it. As for corn, there is an overabundance of it, and for that matter, it is the most common plant in America, which is shown by the plantations that have up to 12-15 acres of corn for a single tenant.

In dieser Gegend oder Profintz Virginia befindet sich auch aller Sorten Wachsthümer die man in Europa findet, welches seynd : Äpfel, Kirschen, Bieren, Persching etc Zwetschen aber hats keine alda. Was die Erdfrüchten anbelangt hat es Waitzen[,] Korn und dergleichen, Früchten aber nicht sehr viel, weil es die engelische Nation nicht hoch estomieren thut : Was das Welsch- Korn anbelangt hat es im Überfluß überhaupt ist es in America eines der stärcksten Gewächs daß gepflanzet wird, man kan sehen auf denen Plantaschen biß 12-15-Morgen Ackerland Welschkorn in einem Fluhr stehen.

What’s more, a lot of cotton is grown here, and this cotton grows in two different ways. One kind is cultivated in the plantations like beans, the shrubs first grow small buds, but when they are mature they are the size of a hen’s egg and then burst out like the husks of chestnuts, freeing the white cotton, which is harvested by the Moors just like the grains. The other kind grows on trees in the same way, but it is held as being the best. In these cotton fields one can see 100 Moors and even more who do the harvesting for their master.

Wiedrum wächset auch sehr viele Baumwolle alda, welche auf zweyerley Arten wachsen thut ; einige wird gepflanzet auf den Plantaschen gleich den Bohnen, mit gantzen Stauten welche treiben gantz kleine Knöpfe von Anfang, wan sie zeitig seyn, so seynd sie in der grösse wie Hüner-Eyer, und springen alsdan auf wie die Hülzen von den Castanien, und die Baumwolle hanget gantz weiß heraus uns wird alsdann eingeerndet wie sonste Früchten durch die Mohren. Wiedrum gibt es die ander Art welche auf den Bäumen wachset auf die nemliche Art welche aber vor besser gehalten wird. Man kann auf denen Baumwoll- Feldern biß 100 und noch mehr Mohren sehen um sie einzusamlen vor ihren Herrn.

There is yet another kind of plant, which grows in the same way as beans, which is comprised of stems and leaves and runs like periwinkle and in their language is called Batäters and in German is called Grundbieren[229].

Wiedrum findet man eine andre Art Gewächse, auf die nemliche Fasson wie Bohnen, mit Stauten und Blätter gantz lauffent gewachsen wie Wintergrün, welches auf ihre Sprache Batäters genennet wird, welches auf Deutsch Grundbieren beteudet.

[réclame]

welche

https://gallica.bnf.fr/iiif/ark:/12148/btv1b10110846m/f71/pct:0,0,50,100/,700/0/native.jpg

Strasbourg, Médiathèque André Malraux, ms f 15, p. 140.

[agrandir]

 Notes

227. The colony of Virginia was the first English colony set up in North America, it owes its name to Queen Elizabeth, Virginia being a reference to her nickname “the Virgin Queen”. The charter was granted in 1606 by James I to the Company of Virginia, a company in charge of developing the English colonies in the New World. The existence of the colony was made official after the foundation of Jamestown in 1607. The House of Burgesses, assembled in 1619, was the first representative system in America. Multiple conflicts with the Indian tribes followed that did not prevent the territory’s constant growth. In 1624 Virginia saw its charter revoked and became a colony of the Crown. Around the end of the eighteenth century, large numbers of plantation owners began growing tobacco as a primary profession. The exportation of tobacco guaranteed the colony’s wealth. Slavery developed simultaneously, as the vast plantations needed a large workforce and the old system of indentured servants (new immigrants entered into long-term work contracts. This status, close to that of slavery, was the fate of large numbers of poor immigrants) did not provide enough. Eighteenth century society in Virginia was dominated by a small number of plantation families, owners of large numbers of slaves, who formed a sort of local aristocracy.
228. A variety of plums called “quetsches” in Alsatian, common from Luxembourg to Austria. Flohr might yet have found this fruit he was familiar with in Canada where it is known under the name “blue plum”. Travelers commonly searched for familiar elements in the landscape and diet of foreign lands, and even associated new varieties they discovered with something they already knew, by simply adding an adjective to specify the particular shape or color of the food. Marc de Ferrière le Vayer, Jean-Pierre Williot (ed.), La Pomme de terre de la Renaissance au XXI siècle, Presses Universitaires de Rennes et François-Rabelais-Tours, Rennes and Tours, 2011, p. 120.
229. Presented by Filippo Baldini in 1787 as “One of the richest gifts that America has ever given to Europe” (De’ Pomi di terra, Naples, s.e., 1787, p.23), the potato is a tuber that has been cultivated on the high Andean plateaus for 2,000 years, but it was already consumed in the south of Chile 13,000 years ago. There are several hundred varieties, most of which are unknown outside of the Andes and grown and harvested by Andean women. Europeans confused the tuber for a long time after the Great Discoveries with the sweet potato and the Jerusalem artichoke. It was rightly classified as one of the edible plants in the Solanaceae family in 1598 by the Bauhin brothers who described it and sketched it in various publications in the seventeenth century. Its presence was recorded in Italy, in the region of Basel, in Montbéliard and in Franche-Comté as early as the late sixteenth century, but it had no official name and was only known under regional names. Grown underground, its small size and wrinkled look led people to confuse it with the truffle, and it was named truffole, triffole, treuffe, or cartoufle (leading to “Kartoffel” in German). The Spanish and English soldiers, assimilating it with sweet potatoes (papas), called it patata in Spanish or potatoe in English, a name that Flohr uses in his account. (Marc de Ferrière le Vayer & Jean-Pierre Williot (ed.) La Pomme de terre de la Renaissance au XXIe siècle, Presses Universitaires de Rennes et François-Rabelais-Tours, Rennes andTours, 2011, p. 233). A second-choice food because it is a tuber and not a grain, it was commonly made into bread in France, where people worshipped bread, whereas in Germany, in Switzerland, and in Alsace, potatoes were cooked in water or under coals and mashed and mixed with milk. A poor man’s food, the potato was negatively viewed down into the 1780s, although in the 1740s it had started being widely imported and consumed. In 1765, in the Encyclopédie, it was presented as barely edible but enhancing the strength of peasants (it was thought of as an aphrodisiac, and as provoking flatulence, proving the organs’ resistance to it). Agronomists praised the virtues of the potato even more intensely in the second half of the eighteenth century (it is nourishing, and can be a healthy food staple), but it was only thanks to its promotion by Parmentier in France that it moved from being a subsistence food reserved for the destitute to being considered as worthy of being eaten by all, and started featuring in the recipes in home economics texts in the 1790s.