THE GRAPES OF NEW YORK. 7 



varieties of the grapes of France to Virginia. The Colonial Assembly 

 showed quite as much solicitude in encouraging the cultivation of the vine 

 as did the Company in London. The year of the importation of vines and 

 vine-dressers, 1619, the Assembly passed an act compelling every house- 

 holder to plant ten cuttings and to protect them from injury and stated that 

 the landowners were expected to acquire the art of dressing a vineyard, 

 either through instruction or by observation. The Company, to increase 

 the interest in vine-growing, showed marked favors to all who undertook 

 it with zealousness; promises of servants, the most valuable gifts that 

 could be made to the colonists, were frequent. Under the impulse thus 

 given vineyards were planted containing as many as ten thousand vines.' 



In spite of a rich soil, congenial climate, and skilled vine-dressers, 

 nothing of importance came from the venture, some of the historians of 

 the time attributing the failure to the massacre of 1622; others to poor 

 management of the vines; and still others to disagreements between the 

 English and their French vine-dressers, who, it was claimed, concealed their 

 knowledge because they worked as slaves. It is probable that the latter 

 explanation was fanciful but the former must have been real for we are 

 told that the farms and outlying settlements were abandoned after the 

 great massacre. But the colony could hardly have recovered from the 

 ravages of the Indians before efforts to force the colonists to grow grapes 

 were again made; for in 1623 the Assembly passed a law that for every 

 four men in the colony a garden should be laid off a part of which was to be 

 planted to vines.' 



In 1639 the Assembly again tried to encourage vine-growing by legis- 

 lative enactment, this time with an act giving a premium to successful grape- 

 growers.' Later, about 1660, a premium of ten thousand pounds of tobacco 

 was offered in Virginia for each " two tunne of wine " from grapes raised 

 in the colony. Shortly after, some wine was exported to England but 



'Discourse of the Old Company, British Stale Papers, Vol. 111:40. See Virginia Magazine 

 of History, Vol. I ; 1 5 9 . 



-Laws and Orders of Assembly, Feb. 16, 1623. McDonald Papers, Vol. 1:97. Va. State 

 Library. 



' The clause in this act reads: " That all workers upon corne and tobacco shall this spring plant 

 five vyne plants per pol, and the next year, before the first day of March, 20 per pol, upon penaltie 

 to forfeite one barrell of corne for every one that shall make default." 



