Whilst reflections of this kind distress the Philanthrope who visits Zante, the naturalist finds the tar spring an object well worthy his curiosity. The trade of the island is also a subject on which I should like to be better informed. On an average, the annual produce in currants is ten million pounds weight. Almost the whole of which, besides nearly the same quantity brought from Cephalonia, and the adjacent parts of the Morea, are taken by the English, who load thirty vessels every year. This trade, however, seems to be a very losing one to us, since our productions have no sale at Zante, and the tin, lead, alum, and a few other articles which we carry to Venice, bear no proportion in value to the fruit we bring home. It is true, our revenue is considerably increased by a duty of twenty-three pounds sterling on every ton of currants, which is one half as much again as the prime cost, the common price at Zante being fifteen guineas. But this tax is railed upon ourselves, and does not check the importation of this foreign commodity, since we consume three-fourths of what the island yields. It might, therefore, as well be levied on some of our own productions, as on our hereditary plumb-pudding. October 17th. Having passed two little forts, called the Navarins, at noon we anchored off Modon, Lat. 37°, Long. 15° 45′, distant from Gibraltar near fourteen hundred miles. And now, having brought the ship to an anchor, I shall proceed with the observations I introduced at the commencement of this letter. Modon is a small Turkish town, on the south-west corner of the Morea, which you recollect is the Peloponnesus of the Ancients, and almost an island, being separated from the rest of Greece by the gulph of Lepanto, and only joined to it by the narrow isthmus of Corinth. After the Greek and Roman ages, it was conquered by the Turks, and afterwards by the Venetians, to whom the former ceded it by the Treaty of Carlowitz, but retook it in 1715, and have maintained it ever since, notwithstanding that, during their last war, Modon was taken by the Russians, who were immediately joined by the Greeks; but the Turks sending a large army thither, Count Orlow and his troops were obliged to abandon their associates to the fury of their enemies, who massacred fifteen thousand of them. This is the Turkish method of terminating a rebellion, which they say is only to be done by destroying the seeds: but, to palliate their inhumanity, they allege, that, whenever the Greeks have gained any advantage, they have been still more barbarous; that they have spared neither age nor sex; but that, after being guilty of every other brutality to the women, so sacred among Mahometans, not satisfied with slaying them, they have even carried their revenge so far as to expose their naked corpses to be devoured by dogs and birds of prey.