I Am At This Moment Looking Down From The Shade Of The Great Walnut-Tree
Upon The Terraced Gardens And Orchards Beneath, Which Are Rich In
Potatoes Of Excellent Quality, Onions, Beet-Root, &C.; Together With
Walnuts, Pears, Apples, Plums, Filberts, Figs, And Mulberries.
The pears
and plums are of several varieties, some will ripen late, others are now
fit to gather, but
Nothing can be touched until the valuer shall arrive;
he is expected in ten days; by which time many of the plums will have
fallen to the ground, and the swarming rats will have eaten half the
pears. The shepherds' children and the various monastery boys live in
the boughs like monkeys, and devour the fruit ripe or unripe, from
morning till evening, with extraordinary impunity; women who arrive from
the low country with children to be christened place them upon the
ground, and climb the pear-trees; neither colic nor cholera is known in
this sanctified locality. The natives of the low country who arrive at
the monastery daily with their laden mules from villages upon the other
side of the mountains, en route to Limasol, immediately ascend the
attractive trees and feast upon the plums; at the same time they fill
their handkerchiefs and pockets with pears, &c., as food during their
return journey. "There will not be much trouble for the valuer when he
arrives," I remarked to the monks, "if you allow such wholesale robbery
of your orchards."
"On the contrary," they replied, "the difficulty will be increased; we
never sell the produce of the gardens, which is kept for the support of
all those who visit us, but we have much trouble with the valuation of
the fruits for taxation. It is hard that we shall have to pay for what
the public consume at our expense, but it will be thus arranged. . . .
The valuer will arrive, and he will find some trees laden with unripe
fruit, others that have been stripped by plunder; the potatoes, &c.,
will be still in the ground. We shall have a person to represent our
interests in the valuation as a check upon the official; but in the end
he will have his own way. We shall explain that certain trees are naked,
as the fruit became ripe and was stolen by the boys. 'Then you ought to
have taken more care of it,' he will reply; `how many okes of plums were
there upon those trees?' We shall have to guess the amount. `Nonsense!'
he will exclaim to whatever figure we may mention, 'there must have been
double that quantity: I shall write down 1500 (if we declared 1000),
which will split the difference.' ("Splitting the difference" is the
usual method of arranging an Oriental dispute, as instanced by Solomon's
well-known suggestion of dividing the baby.).
"We shall protest," continued the monks, "and this kind of inquisitorial
haggling will take place concerning every tree, until the valuer shall
have concluded his labour, and about one-third more than the actual
produce of the orchards will have been booked against us; upon which we
must pay a tax of 10 per cent., at the same time that the risks of
insects, rats, and the expenses of gathering remain to the debit of the
garden.
Enter page number
PreviousNext
Page 218 of 274
Words from 113477 to 114029
of 143016
