There were many attempts to grow foreign grapes in New England. John Winthrop, governor of Massachusetts Bay Colony, had planted a vineyard in one of the islands, known as "Governor's Garden," in Boston Harbor before 1630. Vine-planters were sent to this colony in 1629.[17] There were plantations at the mouth of the Piscataqua in Maine as early or before Winthrop's plantings were made. In granting a charter to Rhode Island in 1663, Charles II sought to encourage viticulture in that State by offering liberal inducements to colonists who would grow grapes and make wine.[18] But if grapes were grown, or wine made from the foreign grape, no great degree of success was attained. Wine was made in plenty from the wild grapes in all of the New England colonies so that it was not because of Puritanical prejudices against wine that the grapes were not grown. The glowing terms in which travelers returning to England spoke of the native grapes and of the wine from them undoubtedly stimulated those founding the colonies to make every effort to introduce the cultivated grape even though the cold, bleak climate and thin soils of this northern region were inhospitable to a plant which thrives best in the sunny southern portions of Europe. In only one of the states east of the Rockies is grape-growing recorded to have gained even a foothold before the introduction of varieties of native grapes. In this instance there is much doubt as to whether the varieties grown were pure-bred _Vitis vinifera_. Louisiana, while owned by France, grew grapes and made wine in such quantities, and the wine was of such high quality, so several of the old chroniclers say, that the French government forbade grape-growing in the colony. Since the wine-making was in the hands of the Jesuits who had learned the art in Europe, and since there were no cultivated varieties of native grapes at that time of which there is record, the presumption among the early writers was that these vineyards were of European grapes. Louisiana, however, was a vast and undefined region and it is not known where these oft-mentioned vineyards were located. It is probable in the light of what we now know that these Louisiana Jesuits made wine from native grapes either wild or cultivated.