If The People Are Too Inert To Improve The Qualities And To Extend The Cultivation Of Vegetables, It Is Easy To Comprehend Their Neglect Of The Tree-Planting So Necessary To The Climatic Requirements Of This Island.

The oil-press is similar to the old-fashioned cider-mill of England.

The fruit, having been dried in the sun, is placed in a circular trough in which the stone wheel revolves, driven by a mule and pole. When sufficiently crushed, and reduced to a paste, it is divided into basketfuls; these are subjected to pressure by the common vertical screw, and the oil is expressed, but is not clarified. It is generally rancid and unfit for European consumption. In travelling through Cyprus the medicine-chest may dispense with castor-oil, as the olive-oil of the country is a good substitute. By the government report, the yield of oil in 1877 was estimated at 250,000 okes (of 2 3/4 lbs.) valued at about nine piastres per oke, but during the same year foreign olive-oil to the value of 1,706 pounds sterling was imported. There can be little doubt that special attention should be bestowed upon the improvement of the olive cultivation in Cyprus, and grafts of the best varieties should be introduced from France and Spain; in a few years an important improvement would result, and the superabundant oil of a propitious season would form an article of export, instead of (as at present) being converted into soap, as otherwise unsaleable.

Our crowd of female admirers was happily dispersed by a slight shower of rain, and by clouds which threatened a downpour; the men remained, and a swarthy-looking thoroughbred Turk promised to accompany me on the morrow and show me the neighbourhood. I was informed in a mysterious whisper by a Cypriote "that this man was a notorious robber, whose occupation was gone since the arrival of the British;" he had formed one of a gang that had infested the mountains, and his brother had murdered a friend of Georgi (the van-driver), and was now in gaol at Rhodes for the capital offence. The Turk was very intelligent, and thoroughly conversant with the various methods of breech-loading firearms; he examined several rifles and guns belonging to me, and at once comprehended the mechanism, and explained it to the admiring crowd. When this individual left our camp in the evening, the story that I had heard in outline was corroborated by the driver Georgi, who asked me to exert my influence to procure the hanging of the murderer now at Rhodes, as the Turkish authorities would never execute a Turk for the murder of a Greek unless influenced by foreign pressure. It appeared that the Cypriote had informed against one of the gang for cattle-stealing, accordingly several members of the fraternity picked a quarrel with him at a drinking-shop one evening at Dali, and stabbed him fatally. My new acquaintance, the Turk, was not present during the fray, and I could not promise Georgi the intervention he desired.

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