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MIXED DRINKS.
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Madeira,a wine of fine bouquet and strong body,made
of a mixture of black and wbite grapes. It is tbe cbief
export from tbe island of Madeira,a province of Por
tugal. The vine wasintroduced soon after tbe discovery
of the island. The marriage of the Infanta Catharine
of Portugal, to Charles II. of England, some two
hundred years later, brought British merchants who
established the wine trade at Funchal. Madeira wine
became very fashionable in the eighteenth centry,being
recommended by army officers, and reached its height
at the opening of the nineteenth century. The vine
crowded out most all other,crops in the island, necessi
tating the importation of breadstufis. When it is men
tioned that some of the wine has been keptfrom fifty to
one hundred years for maturity; that in 1799 a fieet of
ninety-six ships was escorted from Portsmouth to Fun
chal by three British men of war; that this fieet took
three thousand and forty-two pipes of Madeira wine,
partly for the supply of the West Indian Colonies, but
mainly for the beneficial effects of the voyage upon the
wine,thence to England; that for many years Madeira-
merchants sent wine on voyages to the east or west and
back for the purpose of subjecting it to the intense
heat of the ship's hold and the continued motion of the
waves,and thus imparting to it a peculiar fiavor and rich