Democratic Sentinel, Volume 3, Number 20, Rensselaer, Jasper County, 27 June 1879 — Delaware Peaches. [ARTICLE]

Delaware Peaches.

Delaware, the land of peaches! the land where during two months of the year the air holds the fragrant aroma of this king of the fruits! Peaches, peaches everywhere—in baskets, in crates, in boxes, in wagons. At every station of the railroad that traverses the spine of the Delaware water-shed one sees those peculiar vehicles generally known as peach wagons, square, cumbersome, and roomy, unloading their luscious contents. At the more considerable stations all is noise, hubbub, and confusion. One by one the peach wagons come rumbling up to the waiting cars, each one striving to get in first, so as to unload and go home again. At the cars is a very Babel of voices calling for manifests, numbers, and what not, commingled with the squealing of mules, and shouting and swearing of teamsters, and the cracking of whips. Along the roads in all directions rumble the peach wagons, each in a little cloud of dust, like a miniature thunder-storm, each wending its way and converging to a center represented by the nearest railway station. The traveler on the railroad passes long trains of freight cars, hanging around and trailing after which is a luscious odor of most luscious fruit. In New York the Delaware peach is rarely seen at its best; the fruit is picked while yet hard, and so shipped, ripening in the cellars of the commission merchants or the stalls of the venders ; but when they are allowed to ripen to full maturity in the broad and native sunlight of their Southern home, when they swell with the last few hours of ripening, the blush side turning a delicate velvety crimson just mottled with a few darker spots, when they soften, not to flaccidity, on the trees, turning the last drops of sap to nectareous juice, then the Delaware peach is a thing hardly to be sufficiently admired, charming alike with its beauty, its odor, and its taste.— Howard Pyle, in Harper’s Magazine.