28 THE EVOLUTION OP OUR NATIVE FRUITS 



rugged country which had been so recently the 

 theater of Daniel Boone's adventures. 



The party arrived at the vineyard on the 6th of 

 July, 1801. There the colonists, fresh from the snug 

 and well -tilled fields of Switzerland, saw a raw river 

 bottom, rolling gradually up to rocky and wooded 

 hills, which slope away to the south and southeast, 

 and upon which the new vineyard was growing. In 

 the foreground was a log cabin. But they were 

 full of hope, and fell to work with much good -will. 

 The brothers had brought grape vines from home, 

 and these, with loving solicitude, were planted with 

 the vines which had been procured in Philadelphia 

 by the founder. "Three years we were in full ex- 

 pectation, and worked with great courage," writes 

 John James Dufour ; " a great many species of vines 

 showed fruit the third year ; one vine of the Sweet 

 Water was full of eminently good grapes, fully 

 ripened by the first of September. A few bunches 

 that I carried to Lexington, were admired beyond 

 anything. But alas ! it was the first and last year 

 that that vine ever bore fruit, a sickness took hold 

 of all our vines except the few stocks of Cape and 

 Madeira grapes, from each of which we made the 

 fourth year some wine, which was drank by the 

 Shareholders in Lexington in March next." 



A good contemporaneous account of the Dufour 

 vineyard is given by the distinguished Frenchman, 

 Francois Andre Michaux, who visited the place in 

 August, 1802, in his second journey in America. "At 

 fourteen miles from Lexington," he writes in his Trav- 

 els, "I quitted the road to Hickman's ferry: I turned 

 to the left, and lost myself in the middle of the woods, 



