THE ORGAN MOUNTAINS.
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farms
for the cultivation of Indian corn, French beans, and potatoes.
Plentiful crops are yielded of the two former, but the produce of the
latter is neither so abundant nor so good as in England. He has also
near his house a large garden, under the management of a French
gardener, in which nearly all the European fruits and vegetables grow
tolerably well. The peach, the olive, the fig, the vine, the apple, the
quince, the loquat, the pear, the orange, and the banana, may be seen
growing side by side, and all, with the exception of the two latter,
bearing abundance of fruit. The orange and the banana also bear, but
the cold seldom allows the fruit to come to perfection. The strawberry
yields but little fruit, and the gooseberry none at all. The apples are
quite equal to any I have tasted in England, but the peaches are very
inferior; bushels of them are given to feed the pigs. The figs are
delicious, especially a variety which produces small green-coloured
fruit. Excellent crops of cauliflower, cabbage, asparagus, artichokes,
turnips, carrots, peas, onions, &c, are freely produced, and sent
weekly to the city. The most fertile part of the estate is a large
valley, situated between the higher chain of the Organ Mountains and a
smaller range which runs nearly parallel with it, and many of the
smaller valleys, which run up to the peaks themselves, are cultivated;
these are all well watered with small streams of cool and limpid water.
At
this elevation the climate is very much cooler than it is at Rio, the
thermometer in the months of May and June sometimes falling as low as
32° just before daybreak. The lowest at which I observed it myself, was
on the 26th of May, when, at 8 o'clock a.m., the
mercury indicated 39°. The highest to which it rose during the six
months I resided on the mountains, was on the 23rd of February, when
the mercury stood at 84° at noon. The hot season is also the season of
the rains, and violent thunder storms occur almost daily, during the
months of January and February. They come on with great regularity
about four o'clock in the afternoon, and when they pass over, leave a
delightfully cool evening. Like the mountains near Rio, the whole of
the Organ range consists of granite. The alluvial soil is very deep
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