Excerpts from Antoine Denis Raudot's
letters from America in 1710
(translated from the original French)
Letter 56: The Country the Ilinois Inhabit, the Trees Found There and the Vegetables Which Are Cultivated There — At Quebec 1710
Sir,
The country that the Ilinois inhabit is unquestionably the most beautiful
which we know of from the mouth of the St. Lawrence River to that of the Mississipy.
There is little snow there, and the longest it lasts at a time is four to
five days. There is almost no cold weather there, but then the country is
at the latitude of forty degrees twenty minutes.
The land is almost all flat and smooth. There are no mountains, only a few wooded hills. It is nothing but prairies as far as the eye can see, dotted here and there with small patches of woods, with orchards, and with avenues of trees which it seems as if nature took pleasure in making grow in a straight line equally distant from one another.
These woods are full of horse chestnuts, locusts, oaks, ashes, basswoods, beeches, cottonwoods, maples, pecans, mulberries, chestnuts, and plums. All these trees almost covered with a vine that bears a handsome grape and which has large seeds, but has not an agreeable taste.
The pecan bears an olive-shaped nut twice as large as those of France. The meat within is of a great delicateness and is found separated equally in two by a very bitter thin shell.
The medlar (Mespilus germanica) and the mulberry bear fruits as good as those in France, as does the chestnut, but its nut is smaller.
The plums are as beautiful as those of France. There are several kinds,
but they have very thick skins and do not come loose from the seed, nor do
they have the agreeable taste that plums should have.
Several kinds of trees are found there which are unknown to us. is one that
does not grow very tall whose trunk is as thick as a leg, it bears a fruit
that the savages call assemina ("pawpaw"). …This fruit …
is very good and has five or six seeds as large as broad beans and of their
color. There are also trees that have large pods in which are found black
stones and a kind of green ointment whose usage the savages do not know.
Another tree is found whose branches are full of thorns as long as the fingers; it bears pods full of little beans resembling coffee beans and something sticky that is sweet and which it is said that the English used to put in punch. (*NOTE: Honey locust (Gleditsia triacanthos)