Page:A Treatise on the Culture of the Vine and, and the Art of Making Wine.pdf/36

 mother country, would be strengthened by the colonists having the means of employing their industry, and the advantages of their climate in a way not interfering with the mother country in her manufactures or commerce; but which, while it afforded new channels for the latter, would make it their interest to prefer her manufactures to those which, in their present circumstances, are springing up among themselves.

That the cultivators of the Cape have not succeeded, in any considerable degree, in producing wines to the taste of Indian consumers, is no reason why those of New South Wales should be unsuccessful, tot vina quot agri, says Pliny, who, among other illustrious men of ancient times, treated of this subject; and this is a truth, which the extension of the vine over Europe, has only more extensive proved: and it is not less true, that the differences of cultivation and management, produce as great diversities in the wine, as the differences of soil and situation. The first planters of the Cape, came from a country, the very reverse in its nature of one fit for the culture of the vine; and it is natural to suppose, that many of them, ignorant of its cultivation, applied to it the maxims of an agriculture, which might be excellent for raising corn crops on the damp and rich soils of Holland, but which, when applied to the culture of the vine on the hills