This fact shows better than any description could what a really luscious apple it was. There was that in the flavor of it that impelled people to get more.
The Wild Rose Sweeting more nearly resembled the Sweet Harvey than any other apple to which I can liken it. The flavor was like that of the Sweet Harvey thrice refined, perhaps rather more like the August or Pear Sweeting; and it melted on the palate like a spoonful of ice-cream.
It will not seem strange to those who know something of the "apple-belt" of New England that apple-trees, even good ones, should be discovered growing wild in back pastures and secluded openings in the woods.
Oxford County, Maine, abounds in wild apple-trees. By looking about a little, the farmer there can readily pick up enough young trees, growing wild, to set an orchard. They spring up everywhere. For this is one of the world's natural apple regions. North and northeast of the Old Squire's farm rose wooded hills; and extending back among them was a valley, down which ran a brook, abounding in trout-holes at the foot of ledges and large rocks.
At one time the land here was cleared, but being stony and rough it had been used for pasture, and was partly overgrown with bushes. There were thousands of young wild apple-trees here, scrubby and thorny, where cattle had browsed them.
The boys often went fishing in this brook, spring, summer and fall. Far up the valley, at a point where the brook flowed over a ledge, there was a well-known hole. Willis Murch was fishing here one afternoon in the latter part of August, when he saw a red squirrel carrying an apple in its mouth by the stem, and coming out from some thick young hemlocks that grew along the west bank of the brook. He was sitting so still that the squirrel ran close up to him; but when he suddenly thrust out his hand, the animal dropped the apple and scudded away with a shrill chicker.
The apple rolled close to Willis's feet, and he picked it up. Apples were common enough, but this one looked so good that he rubbed it on his sleeve and bit it. Then his eyes opened in surprise, for this was no sour cider-apple, but far and away the best apple he had ever tasted.
"It must grow near here," he said to himself, looking curiously around. "That squirrel didn't bring it far. The stem is fresh, too. He has just gnawed it off the tree."
Thereupon Willis began searching. He crept into the hemlocks on hands and knees. Presently he came upon several other gnawed apples; but even with this clue, he was half an hour finding the tree. There were four or five huge rocks back from the brook among the thick hemlocks. At last he crawled in past two of these that stood close together, and came upon the apple-tree, in a little sheltered amphitheater. It was at the foot of another large rock, twelve or fifteen feet high. A tiny spring oozed out at the foot of the rock; and here this apple-tree had grown up, unwatched and undiscovered save by the squirrels and birds. The tree was a thrifty one. The trunk had attained a diameter of six inches; and when Willis found it, there were, he says, four or five bushels of those delicious Sweetings, now just beginning to ripen. Willis first ate all he desired, then took off his coat, made a bag of it, and shook down the ripest of the apples to carry home to his family and the neighboring boys and girls.
"Won't they smack their lips!" he said to himself. "Won't they be up here for more!"