of tobacco, and this present was heartily approved of by the Company.[1] Under the impulse thus given, vineyards were established containing as many as ten thousand plants.[2]
The specimens of wine sent to England reached that country, so far as recorded, in a very damaged condition, and were described as having been a scandal rather than a credit to the Colony. The faults of the wine were attributed at the time to the defective manner in which it was manufactured.[3] The failure of the industry at this period was by some laid at the door of the vine-dressers, who were thought to have concealed their knowledge because they were worked as slaves. This was a merely fanciful explanation.[4] Captain Butler, who visited Virginia in 1622, declared that the efforts of the Company to introduce the vine and the silk-worm into the Colony were regarded with derision by the planters, and that the pamphlets published in England to give them information in their pursuit of these industries were laughed to scorn. These statements were emphatically denied, and, the failure of wine and silk culture was attributed to the great massacre, an event which was especially destructive to the vineyards, as they had to be abandoned to the incursions of deer when the settlements were reduced in number.[5] That the assertions of Butler
- ↑ Abstracts of Proceedings of the Virginia Company of London, vol. I, p. 136.
- ↑ Discourse of the Old Company, British State Papers, vol. III, 40. See Virginia Magazine of History and Biography, vol. I, p. 159.
- ↑ London Company to Governor and Council of Virginia, June 10, 1622, Neill’s Virginia Company of London, p. 303. This letter shows that only one cask was, on this occasion, sent to England,—a “taste,” as it was elsewhere described. Abstracts of Proceedings of the Virginia Company of London, vol. I, p. 168.
- ↑ Virginia Richly Valued, p. 17, Force’s Historical Tracts, vol. III.
- ↑ Unmasking of our Colony in Virginia, Abstracts of Proceedings of the Virginia Club of London, vol. II, p. 171. For the Answer, see Ibid., pp. 178, 179.
