Nectarines, as we have mentioned before, seem to be especially plentiful in this region:[77] "In the market (Vierny) we also bought grapes, and, still better, small but luscious nectarines, the latter for a halfpenny each, of which, as I sat over my writing at night, I ate so many as to alarm Mr. Sevier, whose medical instincts led him to fear for the consequences. All went well, however, and I never stinted myself from that time onward from Central Asian fruit, and I am thankful to say was not once inconvenienced thereby."
As throwing light on the wild fruits of this region, we have Lansdell's statement that there are whole forests of almond trees and many species of cherries, plums, apples, pears and apricots, but wild peaches are not mentioned.[78]
On another page we are told that peaches in Bokhara are of three varieties, red, white and green, and in a foot-note that they are grown as follows:[79] "When sown, the stone is put in the earth two fingers deep, before the frosts set in; water is then let in and allowed to freeze; after that, earth is put over it and left till the following spring, when the young shoots are transplanted at intervals of four paces. The best peaches are said to come from Samarkand."
One is tempted to enlarge upon fruit-possibilities in these west-Asiatic valleys. Without much strain upon the imagination it is easy to conjure up visions of great fruit-industries in west Asia rivaling those of our own Pacific Coast when communications with European markets are opened and if the people now there or those who may migrate there begin to make use of their opportunities and to take advantage of the best that art and science now offer horticulture. In the event of such a development, peaches, fresh and dried, will not be the least of the products of the region.
THE PEACH IN EUROPE
One finds treasures of experience and inspiration for narrative in the history of the peach in Europe. But to present a systematic record of the peach as it traveled from country to country after its introduction into ancient Greece would require a volume and a long one, which, interesting and profitable as it might be, could hardly be justified in this work. Present purposes are best served by attempting only to point out the landmarks in the history and development of the peach from the time it left Asia until it reached America. The first landmark is in the introduction of the peach into Greece.
The peach in Greece.—As to the approximate date and the manner in which the peach reached Greece, there is now common accord among those who may be considered authorities on the history of fruits. Theophrastus (332 B. C.) was the first Greek to mention the peach, speaking of it as a "Persian fruit." It may be, of course, that the peach came to Greece from Asia Minor or Persia at an earlier date. One might well suspect that if peaches were growing in Persia at the time of the retreat of the Ten Thousand (401 B. C.), since the army must have traversed the country in which, according to some, the peach is native and at least had probably then been introduced, the taste of so pleasant a fruit would have inspired some soldier of the retreating Greeks to carry seeds to his western home. But Xenophon, historian of the retreat and a writer on agriculture as well as of war, does not mention the peach as he almost certainly would have done had it occupied a prominent place among the agricultural products of his time.
There is another story of the introduction of the peach into Greece that may be mentioned to separate fact from fable. Some of the old writers assert that the peach came to Greece from Persia by the way of Egypt. Such statements are founded on a traditionary tale first printed by Pliny to the effect that this fruit was sent into Egypt by the kings of Persia to poison the Egyptians. Pliny[80] denies that the kings of Persia had the peach transplanted into Egypt from motives of revenge but evidently is under the belief that the peach came from Egypt for he says:
"As to the peach-tree, it has been only introduced of late years, and with considerable difficulty; so much so, that it is perfectly barren in the Isle of Rhodes, the first resting-place that it found after leaving Egypt."
We would like to amplify the bare statement that Alexander brought the peach to Greece 332 B. C., but this single fact, if it be a fact, seems to constitute the recorded history of the peach in Greece before the Christian era. Dioscorides, about 64 A. D., was the next Greek to mention the peach but he discusses it with reference to its medicinal properties and does not enlighten us greatly as to its horticultural standing. The fact that the several Greek writers whose books have come down to us from the period under consideration do not mention the peach does not argue that this fruit was not then growing in Greece; for classicists, then as now, seldom got down to earth and the things growing in it.