The Newberry herald and news. (Newberry, S.C.) 1884-1903, 1891-06-18
THE DUTCH PORK.
BY DR. o. B. MAYER, SR.

BY DR. o. B. MAYER, SR.
at thy command,
Again the crumbled halls shall rise;
Lo, as on Evans bank we stand,
The past returns-the present flies.
CADyow CASTLE.
There are two considerable stretches
of original forest remaining in Dutch
Fork, to indicate what was the natu-
raj appearance of the country in the
far past. One of these is the tract of
one hundred acres Of superb oakland
that surrounds St. Johns church, and
belongs to it;the other contains about fif-
teen acres of heavily timbered land, and
lies in front Of the Pomaria residence,
~ distance Of three hundred yards
from it. There are many othe1 1Sss'lal1
remnants of primitive woods scattered
about, but they are not sufficiently ex'
tensive to aid the fancy in plcturing
the "boundless contiguity of shade''
that once extended so widely over this
fair region. When the white people,
following John Adam Summer, came
into these wilds, they found that the
Indians had made few small clear
sings, and had been cultivating them
rudely for the production Of large
kind of grain, since time to which
their memory did not reach. Botanists
have given to this grain the name,
Zea Maize, but in common language,
it is called Indian Corn, from the fact
that it was first found among these
Indians. They, however, must have
used it very sparingly, in the form Of
hominy ian Indian name, according to
Webster), or by simply parching the
grains, since their little fields probably
did not yield all together more than
three hundred bushels. 1t is easy to
infer that the white settlers, accus-
toned, as they were, to eat bread with
their meat, and soon discontented with
lerked beef and venison" dried in the
sun or smoked in the chimney jamb,
speedily brought. into tillage much
larger fields, which under the plough
share yielded prodigious crops of this
new grain, as we'll as of wheat, rye, and
barley: so that it was not long before
the face of the country beamed with
the smiles of civilization.
When we walk through such memo
rial remnants of woodland as have
mentioned we sigh over the destruction
of the forests,-the desolations which
the natural strength of the soil has so
beautifully struggled to repair by means
of the old-feld pine; and we say within
ourselves: The os Ks have been need |
lessly wasted! ..-.
The tilling of the ground to supply |
man with necessary bread would not |
require the yeomanry of the Dutch |
Fork, nor of any other section of coun-
try, to destroy the vast areas of original
growth which we see to-day abandoned
to the broom-sedge, wherever nature
has failed to reforest the waste Places
with the old-feld pine. Nor would
there have been a necessity for any
prodigal clearing of land even by the
of cotton, so long as the
young people for pastime separated
from the seed, with their fingers and
sufficient lint to aid the flax
and the wool in supplying raiment for
the families; but when the cotton-gin
was patented in 1898 by Eli Whitney,
and gin-houses and screws were erected
Ill over the land to supply the world
with what had suddenly become a
great staple,-then, and not til then,
lid the murderous attack upon the
glorious forests begin.
Before cotton came into use in the
Dutch Fork, fax and wool were the
materials from which ordinary cloth
ng was obtained, and altogether by
domestic manufacture. The cloth
woven upon the simple primitive loom
vas wonderfully durable. Toillustrate
his quality as we'll as to publish a fine
moral, I venture to introduce here this
Prose Song of q Shirt. When I was
light years old they made me shirt .
'ut of faxen cloth which had been i'm
bleached by being spread
everal nights upon the grass. After :
t had taken on the shape of garment {
t became as white as snow, through
epeated washings during my Intimacy l
With it, inasmuch as every other Sab
ath for four years from my eighth to |
ny twelfth we wentto church together I
n the closest corlpanionship. Those
we're the days of ruffied shirts; and this
ne (made for me, the favorite of the +
amily) had profusion of ruffies that 6
ngendered pride in my young breast {
ride which, like all other instances of I
!, had its fall. It happened in Colum-
la, on my first visit to that city, and !
then l was ten years old. The shirt t
'as done up in the best style, two days '
efose my departure. The rnttles were c
rimped most delicately, and were !
tarched Sc rigidly for this occasion as
, stand out in front like the quadrant :
f a glistening circular saw. The shirt !
'as carefully folded and placed in i
me honored, blue bandbox, in which i
was to rest undistur6ed until the S
aorning of leaving camp (for I went a
18th the plantation wagon, when I
as to be dressed in my ruffled shirt, .
ly striped waistcoat, my jacket died e
rown in decoction Of walnut-bark, 0
w cODDeraS-hueG brooches and NV Y