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When he regained consciousness and a sense of danger, he found still around him that dense white vapor, through which the pale, drear day was slowly dawning. Above his head was swinging in the mist a cluster of fox-grapes, with the rime upon them, and higher still he saw a quivering red leaf.
Bud came next in his new suit, but he had lost his hat, and was obliged to wear a handkerchief tied over his ears. Ivy brought up the rear, continually tripping on her long cloak, and jolting her white toboggan cap down over her eyes at almost every step. Nuts and persimmons and wild fox-grapes filled the little wagon many times, and made a welcome addition to Mammy's meagre bill of fare.
Green Fox-Grape Jelly. Fill a kettle with grapes, and let them boil with a pint of water till the skins burst, mash and strain them, put a pound of sugar to a pint of juice, and let it boil half and hour. Ripe fox-grapes may be made into very nice jelly in the same way, and is very good to drink in sickness, mixed with water. Pears.
The water came down through the most complicated piece of underbrush that I have ever encountered. Alders and swamp maples and pussy-willows and gray birches grew together in a wild confusion. Blackberry bushes and fox-grapes and cat-briers trailed and twisted themselves in an incredible tangle.
Where the slough's flow joined deeper water a partly uprooted tree was stretched, prone from shore, at the top still thick and green with leaves that drew nourishment from the earth in which the half-uncovered roots yet held, and twined about with an exuberance of trumpet vines and wild fox-grapes.
I have transplanted them into my Orchard, and find they thrive well, if manured: A Neighbour of mine has done the same; mine were by Slips, his from the Roots, which thrive to Admiration, and bear Fruit, tho' not so juicy as the European Grape, but of a glutinous Nature. However, it is pleasant enough to eat. The other Winter Fox-Grapes, are much of the same Bigness.
No doubt they would make a long day of it, this bright, bracing Saturday, for the persimmons and the fox-grapes were ripe and the chinquapin and chestnut burrs were opening. Tears of self-pity sprang to his eyes, but they were quickly dashed away as he heard his name called and saw his beloved Eddie, flushed and glowing with anticipated pleasure, at the gate. "Come along, Rob," he was calling.
She was a stripling of a girl in a butternut frock, standing bolt upright on a woman's saddle, tugging away at a tangle of vines, her mouth stained purple with the big fox-grapes, her round white arms bare to the elbows, and a pink calico sun-bonnet dangling on her shoulders, held only by the broad strings around her throat. The horse under her was smoking wet to the fetlocks.
They had found self-sown corn too, probably maize. The streams were full of salmon. But they had called the land Vinland, by reason of its grapes. Quaint enough, and bearing in its very quaintness the stamp of truth, is the story of the first finding of the wild fox-grapes.
The Summer Fox-Grapes grow not in Clusters, or great Bunches, but are about five or six in a Bunch, about the Bigness of a Damson, or larger. The black sort are frequent, the white not so commonly found. They always grow in Swamps, and low moist Lands, running sometimes very high, and being shady, and therefore proper for Arbours.
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