OF BEGINNINGS 



the sea overflowed them. Of which we found such 

 plenty, as well there as in all places else, both on the 

 sand and on the green soil of the hills as in the plains, 

 as well on every little shrub as also climbing toward 

 the top of high cedars, that I think in all the world 

 the like abundance is not to be found: and myself 

 having seen those parts of Europe that most abound, 

 find such difference as were incredible to be written." 

 Knowing as we do now that North America is in- 

 deed richer in native representatives of the genus 

 Vitis than perhaps any other part of the world, it is 

 possible to conceive something of the astonishment 

 which must have filled this sailor, when he stepped 

 upon virgin shores so richly clothed in a natural mantle 

 of earth's most anciently cultivated fruit. Small won- 

 der that he went on, with bursting enthusiasm, "The 

 woods were not such as you find in Bohemia, Mos- 

 covia or Hercynia, barren and fruitless, but the high- 

 est and reddest cedars of the world, far bettering the 

 cedars of the Azores, of the Indies, of Libanus; pines, 

 cypresses, sassafras, the lentisk or the tree that beareth 

 the mastic; the tree that beareth the rind of black 

 cinnamon, of which Master Winter brought from the 

 Straits of Magellan; and many other of excellent 

 smell and quality." 



The third way winds back to the little fur trading 

 posts set up by the Dutch in 1614, at the southern 



