Some Transactions in Scalps
XXII. Clark Advises Alice
XXIII. And So It Ended
Alice of Old Vincennes
CHAPTER I
UNDER THE CHERRY TREE
Up to the days of Indiana's early statehood, probably as late as
1825, there stood, in what is now the beautiful little city of
Vincennes on the Wabash, the decaying remnant of an old and
curiously gnarled cherry tree, known as the Roussillon tree, le
cerisier de Monsieur Roussillon, as the French inhabitants called
it, which as long as it lived bore fruit remarkable for richness
of flavor and peculiar dark ruby depth of color. The exact spot
where this noble old seedling from la belle France flourished,
declined, and died cannot be certainly pointed out; for in the
rapid and happy growth of Vincennes many land-marks once notable,
among them le cerisier de Monsieur Roussillon, have been destroyed
and the spots where they stood, once familiar to every eye in old
Vincennes, are now lost in the pleasant confusion of the new town.
The security of certain land titles may have largely depended upon
the disappearance of old, fixed objects here and there. Early
records were loosely kept, indeed, scarcely kept at all; many were
destroyed by designing land speculators, while those most
carefully preserved often failed to give even a shadowy trace of
the actual boundaries of the estates held thereby; so that the
position of a house or tree not infrequently settled an important
question of property rights left open by a primitive deed.
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