Page:Early western travels, 1748-1846 (1907 Volume 3).djvu/279

We found particularly, in these forests, a tree which, by the shape of its fruit and the disposition of its leaves, appears to have great affinity with the {236} sophora japonica, the wood of which is used by the Chinese for dyeing yellow. My father, who discovered this tree in 1796, thought that it might be employed for the same use, and become an important object of traffic for the country. He imparted his conjectures to Mr. Blount, then governor of this state, and his letter was inserted in the Gazette at Knoxville on the 15th of March 1796. Several persons in the country having a great desire to know whether it were possible to fix the beautiful yellow which the wood of this tree communicated to the water by the simple infusion, cold, I profited by my stay at Nasheville to send twenty pounds of it to New York, the half of which was remitted to Dr. Mitchell, professor of chemistry, and the other addressed to Paris, to the Board of Agriculture, attached to the Minister of the Interior, in order to verify the degree of utility that might be derived from it. This tree very seldom rises above forty feet, and grows, in preference, on the knobs, species of little hills, where the soil is very rich. Several of the inhabitants have {237} remarked that there is not in the country a single species of tree that produces so great an abundance of sap. The quantity that it supplies exceeds even that of the sugar maple, although the latter is twice its bulk. The epoch of my stay at Nasheville being that when the seeds of this tree were ripe, I gathered a small quantity of them, which I brought over with me, and which have all come up. Several of the plants are at the present moment ten or fifteen inches high. It is very probable that this tree may be reared in France, and that it will endure the cold of our winters, and more so, as,