The Ancient
Olive-Groves Still Exist By The River's Side, And, Could They Speak,
Those Grand Old Trees Would Be
Historians of the glorious days of
Cyprus; but there are no recent plantations, and the natives explained
the cause in
The usual manner by attributing all wretchedness and
popular apathy to the oppression of the Turkish rule. This wholesale
accusation must be received with caution; there can be no doubt of the
pre-existing misrule, but at the same time it is impossible to travel
through Cyprus without the painful conviction that the modern Cypriote
is a reckless tree-destroyer, and that destruction is more natural to
his character than the propagation of timber. There is no reason for the
neglect of olive-planting, but I observed an absence of such cultivation
which must have prevailed during several centuries, even during the
Venetian rule. It is difficult to determine the age of an olive-tree,
which is almost imperishable; it is one of those remarkable examples of
vegetation that illustrates the eternal, and explains the first
instincts of adoration which tree-worship exhibited in the distant past.
I spent some hours with the olive trees of Dali; they were grand old
specimens of the everlasting. One healthy trunk in full vigour measured
twenty-nine feet in circumference; another, twenty-eight feet two
inches. Very many were upwards of twenty feet by my measuring-tape; and
had I accepted the hollow or split trees, there were some that would
have exceeded forty feet.
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