14 



THE GRAPES OF XEW YORK. 



that tnroughout the period many experiments were made in all parts of the 

 eastern United States to grow varieties of Vitis vinijera. The experiments 

 were on a large scale and in the hands of expert vine-growers, as well trained 

 as their fellow colonists in South Africa, New Zealand, Australia and South 

 America, countries where the colonists grew the Old World grapes as easily 

 and as well as they are grown in the most favored parts of Europe. It is 

 certain that the failures recorded for these two hundred years were not 

 due to lack of effort on the part of the settlers. We now pass to more 

 recent efforts, even more thoroughly carried out, to grow the grape of the 

 Old World in this part of the New World. The discussion of these later 

 attempts cannot be full. The reader can readily turn to the horticultural 

 literature of the century just closed and find much fuller records of them 

 than space permits in this work. 



One of the first and most notable of the vineyards in the eighteenth 

 century was that of Colonel Robert Boiling of Buckingham County, Virginia. 

 An account of his undertaking written by one of the Boiling family some 

 years later reads as follows: " It is now but little known that this gentleman 

 had early turned his attention to the cultivation of the vine, and had actu- 

 ally succeeded in procuring and planting a small vineyard of four acres, 

 of European grapes, at Chellow, the seat of his residence: that he had so 

 far accomplished his object as to have the satisfaction of seeing his vines 

 in a most flourishing condition, and arrived at an age when they were just 

 beginning to bear; promising all the success that the most sanguine imagi- 

 nation could desire, when, unfortunately for his family, and perhaps for 

 his country, he departed this life while in the Convention in Richmond, in 

 July, 1775. Thus all his fond anticipations of being enabled, in a short 

 time, to afford to h'.s countrymen a practical demonstration of the facility 

 and certainty with which grapes might be raised, and wine made, in Vir- 

 ginia, were suddenly frustrated; all his hopes and prospects blasted; and 

 owing to the general want of information, in the management of vines, 

 among us at that time ; and the confusion produced by the war of the revo- 

 lution, which immediately followed, this promising and flourishing little 

 vineyard was totally neglected and finally perished."' 



^American Farmer, Baltimore, 10:387. 182S-39. 



