Page:Early western travels, 1748-1846 (1907 Volume 3).djvu/212

 that he has chosen and cleared is on the Kentucky river, about twenty miles from Lexinton. The soil is excellent and the vineyard is planted upon the declivity of a hill exposed to the south, and the base of which is about two hundred fathoms from the river.

Mr. Dufour intended to go to France to procure the vine plants, and with that idea went to New York; but the war, or other causes that I know not, prevented his setting out, and he contented himself with collecting, in this town and Philadelphia, slips of every species that he could find in the possession of individuals that had them in their gardens. After unremitted labour he made a collection of twenty-five different sorts, which he brought to Kentucky, where he employed himself in cultivating them. However the success did not answer the expectation; only four or five various kinds survived, among which were those that he had described by the name of Burgundy and Madeira, but the former is far from being healthy. The grape generally decays before it is ripe. When I saw them the bunches were thin and poor, the berries small, and every thing announced that the vintage of 1802 would not be more {135} abundant than that of the preceding years. The Madeira vines appeared, on the contrary, to give some hopes. Out of a hundred and fifty or two hundred, there was a third loaded with very fine bunches. The whole of these vines do not occupy a space of more than six acres. They are planted and fixed with props similar to those in the environs of Paris.

Such was then the situation of this establishment, in which the stockholders concerned themselves but very little. It was again about to experience another check by the division of Mr. Dufour's family, one part of which