The Old Plantation
When one crosses out of the little State of Delaware into the historic commonwealth of Maryland, looking to the south and west, there stretches away before him a magnificent domain. Temperate in climate, diversified in soil, richly embellished with hill and dale, in many respects it is unequaled by any in the world. It is traversed by the Alleghany and Blue Ridge mountains, with foothills which gradually lose themselves in the sea coast counties, and is watered by such beautiful rivers as will come to mind when you think of the Potomac, the James, the Roanoke, the Savannah, the Alabama, the Rio Grande and the lordly Mississippi.
These rivers drain large valleys and watersheds, whose soil in many portions rivals the fertility of the Nile. This section is blessed indeed by a loving Providence in those innumerable medicinal springs, whose waters are given for the healing of earth's diseased children. Surely when one has familiarized himself with the picturesque valley of the Shenandoah, in dear old Virginia; or has allowed his eye to sweep over the blue-grass region of Kentucky; or has drunk in the beauties of that famous cloudland country in the vicinity of Asheville, in western North Carolina - where the laughing waters of the beautiful French Broad (mirroring the forms of the grandest mountains east of the incomparable Rockies), go on their way rejoicing to tell it out to the sunlit Gulf of Mexico - that here, in the old Southland, is the Eldorado of the world. Surely when one has done this he feels like exclaiming, as does the Neapolitan when he looks upon Naples, "Behold this fair land and then die, for there is nothing more beautiful to be seen on earth."
It does not lie in the province of these short annals to indulge in any elaborate description of this famous section of our country, which has proven such an important factor in the rapid development of our young republic. And yet, common justice demands that something should be said of its wonderful products, notably so of its splendid product of noble men and fair women, which has put the world in love with the very finest type of Anglo-Saxon civilization. Think of her forests, under the shade of whose oaks the Druids might worship, and under whose widespreading beech trees Virgil's fair Amaryllis might have been wooed and won. Think of her grand old hickories, graceful ashes, and above all those lordly pines, in whose branches the wind is ever sighing out the lullaby of old ocean; her magnificent magnolias, from whose flower-swayed branches, our incomparable mocking-bird, night and day, is pouring out his roundelay of love, in notes sweeter far than these of the Oriental nightingale.
Time fails one in telling fully of the wealth, both of the useful and the beautiful, which a beneficent Creator has given us in these widespread forests of the South. Would you speak of flowers? Nowhere on God's green earth does the rich, blushing rose (that century-sceptered queen of lovely Flora) reach higher perfection than in the flower gardens of Raleigh, North Carolina, or in those of Pensacola, Florida. All of our Southern flowers, which represent those exact adjustments of heat and light involved in the higher ranges of color and perfume, find here their fullest requirements. Would you speak of fruits? Think of the luscious Georgia peach, the vermeille on whose cheek equals that of the lovely damsels who pluck and eat them; the melons, the apples, the pears, the nectarines, the figs, the apricots and the luscious grapes, equal to Eschol's clusters, and her oranges as well - in fine, of all her fruits; and while your mouth waters say that nature in dear old Southland has done her best. Would you like nuts with your coffee after dinner? We have walnuts of both varieties, the pecan, the hickory nut, and the more delicate scaly or shell bark, the famous peanut, and even the delicate, dainty, little grass nut of the well appointed Southern garden.
Would you know how it comes about that the cuisine of Baltimore and New Orleans is the wonder and delight of the world? Associate in your mind the fact that "all flesh is grass" with a fine sirloin of blue-grass beef in the South and the noble saddles of Southdown mutton (fatted on this same grass and flavored by browsing the sheep on the budding twigs in our mountain lots), and you will cease to wonder why both New Yorkers and Philadelphians go to the White Sulphur and Capon Springs of Virginia, not only to rest, but to laugh and grow fat as well.
Would you tell me that the perfection of fish is found in the markets of Southern Europe, or to be had at Delmonico's in New York, or in Boston? This is not so. Grant that the wealthy people of the large Northern cities demand that the "pick" of the Chesapeake or Albemarle "catch" shall be carried to them. The power of wealth is very great, but it cannot control nature. The fine shad and other varieties are carried, but in the carriage they lose their finest flavor, and thus the millionaire feeds, in some sense, upon stale fish. When you have eaten the planked shad in full view of the lovely Chesapeake Bay, or have been so fortunate as to enjoy the pompino, that perfection of the Gulf waters, at the old Saint Charles in New Orleans, you will understand how kindly in her dispensations dear old dame nature has been, and still is, to her sunburnt, unconventional Southern children, far away from Gotham and "the hub of civilization," so called. Before passing away from the Southern products, let us not forget her canvasback duck nor her diamondback terrapin. We will not discount that miracle of delicate flavor and toothsomeness, the oysters of our Southern waters, the perfection of which is claimed in the "Broad Creekers" and the "New River catch" of the North Carolina market. At the South, notably so in those blessed days before the flood of 1861 and 1865, our very finest product was the old-fashioned ham of the Southern plantation. More time would be required than can be given it in the description of those conditions which lead up to this time-honored, ancestral essential to a good dinner in its full excellence. In the old South no dinner was in any sense complete without that lordly dish, which always confronted the mistress of the plantation at the head of the table, after the soup and fish had been discussed. Later on we will take a slice out of that old ham. Just now we must go on.
The old South was essentially a people of plantations, as distinguished from farms. Of cities there were but few, and these not strikingly large. Baltimore, New Orleans, St. Louis and Charleston were among the largest; and while there were other smaller cities and towns - in wealth, in political power, in social influence, the most attractive feature of our life - the strength and the charm were in the country. This was so because the South was strikingly an agricultural people. From the greater fixedness and certainty of their possessions, in broad acreage and numerous servants, few of her people had been stung by the gadfly of millionarism, more poisonous than the asp which sucked the blood from Cleopatra's purple veins. They were content to enjoy the profits from producing their various staples of cotton, rice, sugar, tobacco, naval stores and lumber; they were content to live and let live, in doing but very little to build up their commerce or manufactories, but allowing others to transform their products for the markets of the world and thus grow rich.
The above is from The Old Plantation, a book first written in 1901 by James Battle Avirett.