Page:Economic History of Virginia Vol 1.djvu/122

 discovered in the neighborhood of the larger streams. Smith remarks upon the presence of the gooseberry in Virginia, and this was, doubtless, the wild variety so common in the forests of the State to-day, but there is no reference in any of the early records to the blackberry or the dewberry, although the latter must have been frequently seen in the deserted Indian fields at the time of the first settlement, and the blackberry was, probably, equally as common. Nor is there any specific reference to the pawpaw apple, a fruit as rich in flavor as the most cloying fruits of the tropics, growing upon small trees that love the deep shade and the fertile mould of the darkest forest bottoms.

In whatever direction the first adventurers made their explorations, they observed a remarkable abundance of wild grapes; the vines, at the point where they issued from the ground, were frequently as large as the thigh of a man, and they sprang up to the top of the largest trees, to which they clung for support. It was noticed at an early period that only the vines in the vicinity of the Indian habitations and along the edges of the creeks, rivers, and swamps bore any great quantity of fruit, and this was justly attributed to the fact that it was only in these open spaces that the rays of the sun could reach them. There were four varieties of grapes. First there