One day I went over with my wife to show her the place. The site was admirably adapted to grape-raising the soil, with a little attention, could not have been better and with the native grape, the luscious scuppernong, as my main reliance in the beginning, I felt sure that I could introduce and cultivate successfully a number of other varieties. The vines-here partly supported by decayed and broken-down trellises, there twining themselves among the branches of the slender saplings which had sprung up among them-grew in wild and unpruned luxuriance, and the few scattered grapes they bore were the undisputed prey of the first comer. There had been a vineyard of some extent on the place, but it had not been attended to since the war, and had lapsed into utter neglect. The estate had been for years involved in litigation between disputing heirs, during which period shiftless cultivation had well-nigh exhausted the soil. It was a plantation of considerable extent, that had formerly belonged to a wealthy man by the name of McAdoo. I went several times to look at a place that I thought might suit me. Several planters thereabouts had attempted it on a commercial scale, in former years, with greater or less success but like most Southern industries, it had felt the blight of war and had fallen into desuetude. I found that grape-culture, while it had never been carried on to any great extent, was not entirely unknown in the neighborhood. Guide until I became somewhat familiar with the country. My cousin placed a horse and buggy at our disposal, and himself acted as our Our host was a man of means and evidently regarded our visit as a pleasure, and we were therefore correspondingly at our ease, and in a position to act with the coolness of judgment desirable in making so radical a change in our lives. We found the weather delightful at that season, the end of summer, and were hospitably entertained. Indeed, when I first saw the town, there brooded over it a calm that seemed almost sabbatic in its restfulness, though I learned later on that underneath its somnolent exterior the deeper currents of life-love and hatred, joy and despair, ambition and avarice, faith and friendship-flowed not less steadily than in livelier latitudes. This business activity was not immediately apparent to my unaccustomed eyes. There were two or three hotels, a court-house, a jail, stores, offices, and all the appurtenances of a county seat and a commercial emporium for while Patesville numbered only four or five thousand inhabitants, of all shades of complexion, it was one of the principal towns in North Carolina, and had a considerable There was a red brick market-house in the public square, with a tall tower, which held a four-faced clock that struck the hours, and from which there pealed out a curfew at nine o'clock. ![]() We accepted the invitation, and after several days of leisurely travel, the last hundred miles of which were up a river on a sidewheel steamer, we reached our destination, a quaint old town, which I shall call Patesville, because, for one reason, that is not its name. He gave us a cordial invitation to come and visit him while we looked into the matter. He assured me, in response to my inquiries, that no better place could be found in the South than the State and neighborhood where he lived the climate was perfect for health, and, in conjunction with the soil, ideal for grape-culture labor was cheap, and landĬould be bought for a mere song. ![]() I wrote to a cousin who had gone into the turpentine business in central North Carolina. It was a sufficient time after the war for the conditions in the South to have become somewhat settled and I was enough of a pioneer to start a new industry, if I could not find a place where grape-culture had been tried. It occurred to me that I might find what I wanted in some of our own Southern States. ![]() I thought of sunny France, of sleepy Spain, of Southern California, but there were objections to them all. Grape-culture in northern Ohio, and, as I liked the business and had given it much study, I decided to look for some other locality suitable for carrying it on. The doctor's advice was that we seek, not a temporary place of sojourn, but a permanent residence, in a warmer and more equable climate. I shared, from an unprofessional standpoint, his opinion that the raw winds, the chill rains, and the violent changes of temperature that characterized the winters in the regions of the Great Lakes tended to aggravate my wife's difficulty, and would undoubtedly shorten her life if she remained exposed to them. SOME years ago my wife was in poor health, and our family doctor, in whose skill and honesty I had implicit confidence, advised a change of climate.
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