AMERICAN GRAPES. 63 



nor the prices, obtained for it, offered sufficient inducements 

 to persevere. 



DuFouR says : " In my journeying- down the Ohio in 1799, 

 I found at Marietta a Frenchman, -who was makino- several 

 barrels of wine every year, out of grapes that were found 

 growing- wild and abundantly on the heads of the islands in 

 the Ohio river, called sand grapes. I tasted some of .the wine 

 when four months old, and found it equal to that produced 

 near Paris, if not better." The French, on the borders of the 

 Ohio, thought the grape was of French origin, but Mr. Du- 

 FOUR subsequently found it growing- wild in Kentucky and 

 elsewhere. It was probably the Red Fox grape, varieties of 

 which we now have in our vineyards under the name of the 

 " Venango," " Minor's Seedling," etc. 



DuFOUR remarks : " None of the different and numerous 

 trials which were made in several parts of the United States, 

 that I visited in 1796, were found worth the name of vine- 

 prds." "I went to see all the vines growing that I could 

 near of, even as far as Kaskaskia on the Mississippi, where I 

 was informed, the Jesuits had planted a vineyard shortly after 

 the first settlement of the country, but that the French gov- 

 ernment had ordered it to be destroyed, for fear that vine cul- 

 ture might spread in America and hurt the wine-trade of 

 France." 



"I found only the spot where that vineyard had been 

 planted, in a well-selected place, on the side of a hill, to the 

 north-east of the town, under a cliflf. No good grapes were 

 found there or in any gardens of the country." 



AMERICAN GRAPES. 



Mr. W. R. Prince, in his Treatise on the Vine — New York, 

 1830; enumerates eighty-eight varieties of American grapes, 

 many of them supposed to be valuable for making wine. 



The experiments of western cultivators have been confined 

 to but a small portion of that number, and their final selec- 



