In Delaware, Beauchamp Plantagenet, describing a "Uvedale under Websneck," in his account of New Albion, says that it contains "four sorts of excellent great vines running on mulberry and sassafras trees; there are four sorts of grapes, the first is the Thoulouse Muscat, sweet scented, the second the great fox and thick grape, after five months reaped being boiled and salted, and well fined, it is a strong red Xeres; the third a light Claret, the fourth a white grape creeps on the land, maketh a pure gold color white wine; Tenis Pale, the Frenchman, of these four made eight sorts of excellent wine, and of the Muscat acute boiled that the second draught will fox[51] a reasonable pate four months old: and here may be gathered and made two hundred ton in the vintage month, and replanted will mend." In New England the seventeenth century notices of the wild grape are even more numerous than similar records to the south but they are briefer and the northern observer did not recognize the possibilities of their domestic use and of bringing them under cultivation. This seeming neglect of the Puritans was not because the northern wild grapes are inferior to those of Virginia and the Carolinas, but more likely because of the social and industrial conditions of the colonists. The richer planters in the South had time for wine-making, the only purpose for which grapes were then grown, and for growing the grapes. The New Englanders had to struggle for the necessities of life. It is significant, too, that the Southerners were fond of wine, and imported Madeira in large quantities. In New England, rum seems to have been preferred to wine, and as its manufacture from molasses is very simple and the latter was to be had from the West Indies at small cost, wine-making and grape-growing received small attention. Yet nearly all of the writers on the resources of the New England Colonies mentioned grapes. Thus Governor Edward Winslow writing in 1621 of the country in which the Puritans had found a home says: "here are grapes, white and red, and very sweet and strong also." We have seen that Winthrop was so impressed with the possibility of grape-growing in the new colony that he secured a grant of Governor's Island in Boston Harbor upon which to plant a vineyard. In Thomas Morton's _New English Canaan_ is found the best account of the wild grapes of New England as the Puritan found them. He says:[52] "Vines, of this kinde of trees, there are that beare grapes of three colours, that is to say: white, black, and red. "The Country is so apt for vines, that (but for the fire at the spring of the yeare) the vines would so over spreade the land, that one should not be able to passe for them, the fruit is as bigg of some as a musket bullet, and is excellent in taste."