192 



ON VINEYARDS. 



Vineyards are of very ancient date, and wine is 

 allowed to be the first fermented liquor known to 

 man. b 



descriptions of the climate of Germany tend exceedingly to 

 confirm their theory. The general complaints of intense frost 

 and eternal winter are, perhaps, little to be regarded ; since 

 we have no method of reducing to the accurate standard of 

 the thermometer the feelings or the expressions of an orator 

 born in the happier regions of Greece or Asia. But I shall 

 select two strong and incontestable proofs of a less equivocal 

 nature. 



" 1st. The great rivers which covered the Roman provinces, 

 the Rhine and the Danube, were frequently frozen over, and 

 capable of supporting the most enormous weights. The bar- 

 barians, who often chose that severe season for their inroads, 

 transported, without apprehension or danger, their numerous 

 armies, their cavalry, and their heavy waggons, over a vast and 

 solid bridge of ice. * Modern ages have not presented an 

 instance of a like phenomenon. 



" 2d. The rein-deer, that useful animal, from whom the sa- 

 vage of the north derives the best comforts of his dreary life, 

 is of a constitution that supports, and even requires, the most 

 intense cold. He is found on the rock of Spitzberg, within 

 ten degrees of the Pole. He seems to delight in the snows of 

 Lapland and Siberia ; but at present he cannot subsist, much 



* Diodorus Siculus, lib. v. p. 349. Edit. Wessel. Herodian, 

 lib. vi. p. 221. Jornandes, chap. 55. On the banks of the Da- 

 nube, the wine, when brought to table, was frequently frozen into 

 great lumps, frusta vini. Ovid. Epist. ex Ponto, lib. iv. 7. 9, 10. 

 Virgil. Georgic. lib. iii. 355. The fact is confirmed by a soldier 

 and a philosopher, who had experienced the intense cold of Thrace* 

 See Xenophon, Anabasis^ lib. vii. p. 560. Edit. Hutchinson, 



