Hurrah for the merry vine!
[1] According to Eusebius.
CHAPTER IX.
On the Moselle the vintage is still conducted in the old-fashioned way, much of the wine being still pressed from the bunches by the feet. The clusters, which have been carefully cut from the trees, are placed in the baskets (which the people seem always to wear on their backs), and borne down the hill-side to the village, where they are tumbled into great tubs, in which they are crushed, if not by the feet, by wooden mallets.
The long toil of carrying up great basketsful of dressing for the roots, of hacking round the vines, of carefully tying up the boughs and tending them in every possible way, repairing the walls and steps, and placing beneath the fruit-bunches flat stones to refract the heat on to their lower sides, is ended; all having prospered, joy is at its height, for plenty will fill the homes of the cultivators during the coming winter.