Note 209 — {41} Fifthly, Of Plants.

“Pompions and water-mellons, too, they have good store,” says our author (Voyages, p. 130); and again, at p. 74 of the same, “The water-melon is proper to the countrie. The flesh of it is of a flesh-colour; a rare cooler of feavers, and excellent against the stone.” The water-melon (Cucurbita citrullus, L.) is “the only medicine the common people use in ardent fevers,” in Egypt (Loudon, l. c.). Cucurbita pepo, L. (Gr. πέπων; Low Dutch, pepoen, pompoen; Fr., pompone), is our English pompion, or pumpkin. At p. 91, Josselyn speaks of pompions “proper to the country.” Compare Gerard’s chapter “of melons, or pompions” (Johnson’s Gerard, p. 918), where are two Virginian sorts; and see “the ancient New-England standing dish,” at p. 91 of this book. The evidence appears to be sufficient, that our savages had in cultivation, together with their corn and tobacco,—and, like these, derived originally from tropical regions,—several sorts of what we call squashes, some kinds of pompion, and also water-melons; and, Graves’s letter (New-England Plantation, l. c., p. 124) adds, musk-melons. See further, especially, Champlain (Voy. de la Nouv. France, passim) and L’Escarbot (Hist. de la Nouv. France, vol. ii. p. 836). Mr. A. De Candolle (Geogr. Bot., vol. ii. pp. 899, 904) disputes the American origin of the edible gourds, but does not appear to have examined all the early authorities for their cultivation by the savages before the settlement of this country. Such cultivation appears to be made out, and to indicate that these vegetables have probably been known, from very remote antiquity, in the warmer parts of America. But this does not touch the difficult question of origin; and it may still appear that the gourds are equally ancient in Europe, and derived, both here and there, from Asia (De Cand., l. c.); such derivation being explainable, in the case of America, by old migrations from Asia through Polynesia.—Pickering, Races of Man, chap. 17.