bare sand dunes, a genial sun
brings to maturity its wealth of tree and vine and shrub. Protected
from the storms which ravage the ocean beyond, it sleeps in quiet
beauty, content with its heritage of fame as _the first home of the
English race in America_.

Its isolated position, its wild beauty, its tragic associations, its
dignified repose, all seem to have set it aside from the rush of modern
progress that it might become a shrine for the homage of a patriotic
people.

The wonderful fertility of the soil of this island seemed a marvel to
the early explorers, all of whom have testified to it. Ralph Lane,
governor of the colony of 1585, in writing to Raleigh of the island and
the surrounding country, declared it to be "the goodliest soil under
the cope of heaven," and that "being inhabited with English no realm in
Christendom were comparable to it;" every word of which is true now,
provided that the English who inhabit it follow the suggestions of
nature and adopt horticulture as the developing means. The surrounding
country as well as Roanoak Island has a wealth of climbing vines and
clustering grapes which point instinctively to grape culture. Amadas
and Barlowe (1584) wrote that they found the land "so full of grapes as
the very beating and surge of the sea overflowed them, of which we
found such plenty, as well there as in all places else, both on the
sand and on the green soil, on the hills as on the plains, as well as
on every little shrub as also climbing towards the top of high cedars,
that I think in all the world the like abundance is not to be found."

[Illustration: A Scuppernong Vineyard, Roanoak Island]

Surely no other such natural vineyard was ever found outside the fabled
Garden of the Gods!

Even in this generation an old resident of the Banks, an ante-bellum
pilot on these waters, has testified that his grandfather could
remember the time "when if a vessel were stranded on any of the beaches
the crew could crawl to land on the grapevines hanging over where now
there is only a dry sand beach." Throughout the eastern part of that
State (North Carolina) the grape riots in natural luxuriance and is
luscious and fragrant. Many varieties remain wild, while others have
been improved by cultivation. The three finest native American grapes,
the Catawba, the Isabella, and the Scuppernong, are all indigenous to
the soil of North Carolina. The Catawba, native to the banks of the
river Catawba, from which