The First Question To The Cultivator Would Be, "What Reforms Do You Yourself Suggest?" He Replies, "Fix An Annual Rate

Per donum, and leave us free to send our wine wherever we choose, without the abominable vexations and delays caused

By the present arbitrary system; let the tax per donum include every charge for which we shall be liable: we shall then know at once the limit of our liability." I cannot see any practical difficulty in such an arrangement; a highway rate might be an extra when the roads should be completed. A small export duty at the various ports would become a material source of increase to the revenue when the wine trade became invigorated and extended by government encouragement, and although such a duty would indirectly affect the grower in the price which the merchant would pay for the new wine, it would be a collateral tax that would not be felt individually.

Unless the present oppressive system shall be abolished the wine trade of Cyprus will languish, and an industry that may be profitably extended to an important degree will share the fate of a commercial and agricultural depression which has resulted from the vague conditions of the British occupation, and from which no recovery can be expected until confidence in the future prospects of the island shall be established.

CHAPTER XI.

FROM LIMASOL TO THE MOUNTAINS.

The barley harvest was in active operation, and the fields around our camp were crowded with men, women, and children, all hard at work, but producing small results compared with an equal expenditure of European labour. Their sickles were large and good, but a great proportion of the crops were either broken off by hand or were dragged out by the roots, and the earth that adhered was carelessly dusted off by a blow against the reaper's boots. In this dry climate there was no necessity for piling the sheaves, but the small bundles were at once laden upon donkeys and also conveyed in the two-wheeled carts to the threshing- ground, upon which it would remain until valued for taxation by the government official. In the dry atmosphere of Cyprus, Syria, Egypt, &c., the straw breaks easily, and beneath the sharp flints of the ancient threshing-harrow in present use is quickly reduced to the coarse chaff known as "tibbin," which forms the staple article of food for horses and all cattle. Taking advantage of the numbers of people congregated in the fields, some itinerant gipsies with a monkey and performing bears were camped beneath the caroub-trees, about half a mile from our position. The bears were the Syrian variety. Throughout Cyprus the gipsies are known as tinners of pots and makers of wooden spoons, which seems to be the normal occupation of their tribe throughout the world; they have also a character for a peculiar attachment to fowls and any other small matters that belong to private individuals which may be met with during their wanderings.

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