APPENDIX I. 305 



DE. UNDERHILL'S VINEYARDS AT OROTON POINT. 



s 



The following account of Dr. Underhill's Vineyards is taken 

 from the "Country Gentleman" of September 25th, 1856. 

 Since that account was published, Dr. Underhill has greatly 

 extended his vineyards, and is thus enabled to devote more of 

 his grapes to the production of wine without lessening the 

 quantity of fruit sent to New York market. 



" The readers of our papers have long been familiar with the name of 

 Dr. Underbill as a grower of Isabella and Catawba vines, and lovers of 

 well ripened and carefully marketed grapes in New York city, as the 

 most extensive producer of this fruit in its vicinity. He began to plant 

 the varieties named, or at least the former of them, about twenty-five 

 years ago, having previously made some unsuccessful attempts at grow- 

 ing foreign sorts without shelter ; and he has been untiring in his subse- 

 quent efforts to attain the best mode of cultivation in every particular, 

 from the first setting of the slip, to the productive maturity of the plant in 

 the vineyard. He is now in possession of nearly a hundred acres of land, 

 of which upward of forty are in grapes, or, with the addition of adjoin- 

 ing vineyards belonging to his brother, there are more than fifty acres in 

 all, to the sale of plants and the marketing of fruit from which Dr. Under- 

 hill gives his undivided attention. 



" Croton, or Teller's Point, as it was formerly called, juts into the 

 river fully half its width, dividing Haverstraw bay above from the Tappan 

 Zee below. The stream from which it has received the name it now 

 generally goes by, falls into the Hudson on the south — what is left of it 

 after being dammed and drained off for the benefit of New York city. 

 The extreme point of the little peninsula turns downward, commanding in 

 this direction one of the finest river views among the many beautiful ones 

 for which the Hudson is justly famous. Here, once in Revolutionary 

 times, was fired a humble cannon at the Vulture in the bay below — scar- 

 ing her from her anchorage, and leaving Andre without means of safe 

 escape from the plot he was projecting with the traitorous Arnold. The 

 soil is nearly a pure gravelly sand, underlaid at a depth of twenty or 

 thirty feet with clay, and bordered here and there at the river's edge 



