As to the native home of the currants, opinions have considerably differed. Some have supposed Zante or Naxos to have been the original home of this grape; while others, with better reasons, have held that their original home was Corinth. Beaujour, who was French consul in Greece in 1790, says: “The fruit is not indigenous to Morea. No writer before the sixteenth century mentions it, and the result of my inquiries is that the currant came from Naxos into the Morea about 1580. It is true no such plant now exists in Naxos, but it has similarly disappeared from the territory of Corinth, though it is very certain it was cultivated there in former days, when the Venetians held the country.” This account does not agree with the statements of Comte Grasset St. Sauveur, consul to the Ionian Islands from France in 1781. He states, in his History of the Ionian Islands, that “the first plants were imported from Corinth to Zante about two centuries ago” (or about 1580). There are no exact records of the time or of the introducer; but the date is fixed by the regulations of the Senate of Venice relating to custom duties. It is likely this introduction took place not much before 1553, and was caused by the hostility of the Turks, who then held Morea, to the merchant vessels of the other nations of Europe, who in fact forbade them any entrance to the Gulf of Corinth, the principal export place for the currants. Thus John Locke, who in 1553 describes Zante, speaks of other products of the island, but not of currants.