sown here and there with a few plants. I was confirmed in my opinion by that which some of the country people had given me of these meadows before I reached them. They told me that in this season I should perish with heat and thirst, and that I should not find the least shade the whole of the way, as the major part of the Americans who live in the woods have not the least idea that there is any part of the country entirely open, and still less that they could inhabit it. Instead of finding a country as it had been depicted to me, I was agreeably surprised to see a beautiful meadow, where the grass was from two to three feet high. Amidst these pasture lands I discovered a great variety of plants, among which were the gerardia flava, or gall of the earth; the gnaphalium dioicum, or white plantain; and the rudbekia purpurea. I observed that the roots of the latter plant participated in some degree with the sharp taste of the leaves of the spilanthus [149] oleracca. When I crossed these meadows the flower season was over with three parts of the plants, but the time for most of the seeds to ripen was still at a great distance; nevertheless I gathered about ninety different species of them which I took with me to France.
In some parts of the meadows we observed several species of the wild vine, and in particular that called by the inhabitants summer grapes, the bunches are as large, and the grapes of as good a quality as those in the vineyards round Paris, with this difference, that the berries are not quite so close together.
It seems to me that the attempts which have been made in Kentucky to establish the culture of the vine would have been more successful in the Barrens, the soil of which appears to me more adapted for this kind of culture than that on the banks of the Kentucky; the latter
