AGRICULTURAL INDUSTRIES 201 



Canada. There is scarcely any winter, and all kinds 

 of fruit grow there as well as they do in France." ^ 

 Many years later another observer recounts how, 

 along the Kiver Eaisin, "everywhere, in the wild- 

 Avood and in the glade, on the river's edge, and as 

 far away under the over-arching trees as the eye 

 could see Avas a wealth of grape-vines. Everywhere 

 hung clusters of rich, purple fruit; everywhere, with 

 a wild luxuriance that far surpassed the stories their 

 fathers had told of the vineyards of sunny France." 

 And it is related how at one point a man walked for 

 eighty rods on grape-vines without touching the 

 ground. These wild vines, in the hard cold season 

 of 1875, are stated to have been the only grapes 

 that matured sufficiently for the requirements of the 

 local vintage, although by that time cultivated varie- 

 ties had been introduced.^ 



When American settlers began to enter the Michi- 

 gan territory after the War of 1812, they found a 

 varied assortment of native fruits already established 

 there. Some of these are strictly indigenous, such 

 as the wild plum, wild crab-apple, wild cherry, 

 and many varieties of berries, such as the wild 

 strawberry, black, white and red raspberry, blue- 

 berry, huckleberry (high-bush and low-bush). The 

 salmon-berry, variously styled also the white-flowered 

 raspberry, and, in the Lake Superior country, the 

 thimble-berry, produced its attractive white flowers 

 on its broad-leaved stem, and then its delicate pale red 



* "Jesuit Relations," LX\aiI, 283. 

 ^"Rept. Mich. Bd. Agr.," 1875, 81. 



