At first sight this system appears incredible, but upon an examination of the details our wonder ceases at the general absence of cultivated vegetables and the propagation of superior qualities of fruits. If the object of the government were purposely to repress all horticultural enterprise, and to drive the inhabitants to the Nebuchadnezzar-like grazing upon wild herbs, the present system would assuredly accomplish the baneful end. The Cypriotes are called indolent, and are blamed by travellers for their apathy in contenting themselves with wild vegetables, when their soil is eminently adapted in the varying altitudes and climates for the production of the finest qualities of fruits and green-stuffs. I will imagine that an Englishman of any class may be placed in the following position of a cultivator, which he assuredly would be, if foolish enough to become a proprietor in Cyprus. 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."