umbus was the first
European who ever tasted a potato, and that was in 1492, when he reached
Cuba. From Cuba he brought samples back with him to Genoa. This would
make our history one hundred years older, only it so happens that the
_Solanum tuberosum_ is not a native of these parts, and could not have
been at Cuba when Columbus was there. What he tasted and brought home
was the _Convolvulus batatas_, or sweet potato, a very different
article, although it gave its name, 'batatas,' to our tuber in the
modified form of 'potato.'

The real potato is a native of Chili, and it has been proved to the
satisfaction of naturalists that it did not exist in North America
before the arrival of Europeans. How, then, could Sir John Hawkins bring
it from Santa-Fe in 1565, or Sir Walter Raleigh from Virginia in 1584?
Well, in the first place, it was the sweet potato that Sir John brought;
and in the second place, before Sir Walter went to Virginia, the
Spaniards had brought there the real potato on returning from some of
their South American expeditions. In 1580 they sent it home, and there
is evidence that by 1580 the _Solanum tuberosum_ had been planted in
North America. By the time Raleigh brought it to England, however, it
was already a familiar root in Italy.

But did he bring it? There are some who say that it was Sir Francis
Drake who brought the roots and presented them to Sir Walter Raleigh,
who planted them on his estate near Cork in the year 1594. M'Culloch,
however, says that 1610 was the year of the introduction into Ireland,
and other writers say that Raleigh knew so little of the virtues of the
plant he was naturalizing that he caused the apples, not the tubers, to
be cooked and served upon his own table. Buckle, however, says that the
common, or Virginian, potato was introduced by Raleigh in 1586, and
Lyte, who wrote in that year, does not mention the plant; but Gerarde,
who published the first edition of his Herbal in 1597, gave a portrait
of himself with a potato in his hand.

Here, then, we have some negative certainties and some positive
uncertainties. Columbus did not take the real potato to Genoa in 1492;
Hawkins did not bring it to England in 1565. The Spaniards did take it
to Spain in or about 1580; but whether Raleigh was the first to bring it
to Britain, and in what year, remains open to doubt.

During the whole of the seventeenth century the potato was quite a
rarity in this country, and up to 1684 was cu