Page:Economic History of Virginia Vol 1.djvu/123

 was the variety found most commonly in the valleys of the streams and in the swamps of the uplands; the fruit grew in small bunches and differed in color, being white, black, or purple, and was in size as large as the Dutch gooseberry. This was probably the modern sloe, for in addition to these characteristics, the vine clung in great masses to the ground or overran small bushes for a prop. The fox grape, a name derived from its musky odor, represented the second variety, and, like the first, it showed a proclivity for swamps and banks of streams. It was as large as the English bullace. The third and fourth varieties were small in size, diverse, in color, and grew on vines of enormous length and girth; they began to ripen in the latter part of August, but clung to the stem long after the first snows had fallen.

So numerous were the strawberries in season that one observer, who was undoubtedly speaking with exaggeration, declared that in wandering through the forests it was hardly possible to direct the foot without dyeing it in the blood of this fruit. Another relates that wherever the English on their first arrival penetrated the woods, they came upon plats of ground overgrown with these berries, which were four times larger and much more exquisitely flavored than those they had been accustomed to in England. Among the first plants to spring up in the clearings made around the fort at Jamestown by the first colonists, was the strawberry, and the fruit increased in abundance as the area of abandoned fields grew wider.