EARLY RECORDS OP GRAPES 3 



perilous." Governor's Island, in Boston Barbor, was 

 granted t<> Governor Winthrop in Ki.!:!. upon the 

 condition that he should plant a vineyard <>v orchard 

 upnn it ; and in 1(>!4 the yearly rent was a 

 head of wine. 



England, however, is not a wine-making country. 

 The vine is there grown Laboriously upon walls and 

 onder glassy to rescue it from the uncongenial cool- 

 ■ • sfl of the summers. So the New Englanders ap- 

 pear not to have given great attention to wine-mak- 

 ing, either from the native grape or from plantations 

 <>t' introduced vines. Then, the summers are too short 

 and the winters too severe to give much encourage- 

 ment to the growing of the vine for wine-making 

 in New England, and we must look farther south for 

 the early evolution of the American grape. 



The Spanish colonists in Florida were attracted 

 by the wild grapes. John Hawkins, an English cap- 

 tain, visited these settlements in 1565, and said that 

 twenty hogsheads of wine had been made in a single 

 on, and he speaks of the wild grapes, which 

 " taste much like <»nr English grapes." The intrepid 

 French adventurers and colonists were everywhere 

 attracted by the abundance of grapes, and we find 



i rants of their wine-making far in the interior 



country. In 1769, the French settlers al Kaskaskia, 

 in southern Illinois, made im hogsheads of wine 

 from wild grapes. Even as far north as Michigan, 

 these voyageura found the banks of the Btreams fes 

 tooned with the vines and the purple fruits banging 

 in wild abandon in the rich September Bun. Over a 

 hundred yean ago, a partj of these explorers pushed 

 np a river in southern Michigan and. noticing the 



