ESSEX AS A WINE-PRODUCING COUNTY.
45
is very prevalent, and I am inclined to believe that it is well
founded, though it is obviously almost impossible to obtain
tangible and conclusive evidence by means of which such a belief
may be tested. It is almost certain, however, that such a change
in climate has taken place, within historic times, in some of the
other countries surrounding the North Atlantic—namely Iceland
and Greenland. In the case of Greenland, it would now be
impossible to maintain there such settlements as we know for a
certainty were maintained at Kakortok, and elsewhere on the
west coast, by the Scandinavians, in the Eleventh and Twelfth
Centuries. Then, as regards Iceland, there are several reasons
for thinking that its climate has deteriorated since mediaeval
times. Ivar Bardsen, a Greenlander, who, in the Fourteenth
Century, wrote a description of Greenland, says 37 that, even
then, the ice lying in the sea between Iceland and Greenland
had increased so greatly that it was impossible to sail the ancient
route to Greenland, due west from Snaefjeldnes in Iceland ;
while Captain Graah has declared 38 that this ice is still
continually on the increase on the east coast of Greenland,
thereby necessitating its thin population to emigrate to the
west side. The Norwegian glaciers, too, are said to be extend-
ing noticeably. Many other facts pointing in the same direction
might be cited ; and it can hardly be doubted that the British
Isles have shared in this general deterioration of climate which
seems to have gone on over the North Atlantic within his-
toric times.
It is, however, by no means necessary to show that the
climate of this country has changed for the worse within historic
times in order to account for the discontinuance of viniculture
with us. Whether such a change has taken place or not, and
whether it has rendered viniculture here more difficult or not, it
is probable that the discontinuance of viniculture in Essex was
due to another cause altogether—namely, to the steady improve-
ment in the means of transport and of communication with other
parts of the world, which gradually rendered it less and less
remunerative to cultivate the vine in regions certainly not
specially adapted to it, and in which it is not indigenous, when
better wine could he imported at comparatively small cost
from more favoured countries, further south.
37 SM Major's Voyages of the Zeni (Hakluyt Society, 1874), pp. 39-40.
38 Narrative of an Expedition to the East Coast of Greenland. . . . .under the com-
mand of Capt. W. A. Graah, of the Danish Royal Navy. . . . .translated by C. G. Mac-
Dougall (Lond., 8o., 1837), p. 115.