﻿NO. 19 NORSE VISITS TO NORTH AMERICA — BABCOCK 93 



vines from southern New England and plant them at Port Royal, 

 Nova Scotia, where they did not grow. 1 



Strachey 2 celebrated these grapes in the same vein as the King of 

 Denmark, but more voluminously, during the time of Powhatan's 

 confederacy, " the Queen of Portobaco," " the Emperor of the 

 Nanticokes " and " the laughing King of Accomac." He writes : 



It would surely raise a well-stayed judgment into wonder (as Sir Thomas 

 Dale hath writ sometime unto his majesty's counsel here for Virginia) to 

 behold the goodly vines burthening every neighbor bush and climbing the tops 

 of highest trees and these full of clusters of grapes in their kind, however 

 draped and shaded soever from the sun and though never pruned nor manured. 

 I dare say it that we have eaten there as full and luscious a grape as in the 

 villages between Paris and Amiens and have drunk often of the rath wine zvhich 

 Dr. Bohune and other of our people have made full as good as your French 

 British wines. Twenty gallons at one time have sometimes been made, without 

 any other help than crushing the grapes in the hand, which letting to settle five 

 or six days hath in the drawing forth proved strong and heady. 



This would seem to dispose of Dr. Nansen's suggestion that Leif 

 and others had neither appliances nor leisure for wine-making. 



Possibly, like the Norsemen, the Virginians overrated this vintage. 

 It is more to the purpose to note the effect of these wine-yielding 

 wild-grapes on the minds of early explorers and colonizers ; and that, 

 with so many centuries between them, both apply the same praise 

 to the same thing. " Strong and heady " no doubt had much to do 

 with the excellence ascribed. 



These grapes are especially important to our present research, not 

 only because they gave North America its first name (unless we 

 except the more dubious Great Ireland) but because they are our 

 best clew to one of the " lands " that Leif discovered. Being first 

 or last where fox grapes were abundant, he must have reached 

 southern New England at least, more likely New Jersey, or even the 

 regions about the Chesapeake. Remembering Cabot and Hudson 



1 Leif's crew, like our people of the District of Columbia and neighboring 

 states, doubtless did not discriminate, except between the small berry-like kind 

 (which would not be highly valued where better berries were plentiful) 

 and the large kind, good for table-fruit and for wine. We call the latter 

 "fox grapes." I have picked and eaten them on a low island of the Anacostia 

 near Benning's bridge, and only a few feet from a great bed of wild rice, a 

 spot probably within the limits o{ Washington City. More commonly they 

 occur on our hills. A few years ago a great number were gathered near the 

 Conduit Road for our household use. Civilization clears them away; yet I 

 have found them, both green and ripe, near the lower reservoir in a dense 

 thicket on two occasions in August, 1911. 



2 W. Strachey: The Historie of Travaile into Virginia, p. 120. 



