"On the contrary," they replied, "the difficulty will be increased; we never sell the produce of the gardens, which is kept for the support of all those who visit us, but we have much trouble with the valuation of the fruits for taxation. It is hard that we shall have to pay for what the public consume at our expense, but it will be thus arranged. . . . The valuer will arrive, and he will find some trees laden with unripe fruit, others that have been stripped by plunder; the potatoes, &c., will be still in the ground. We shall have a person to represent our interests in the valuation as a check upon the official; but in the end he will have his own way. We shall explain that certain trees are naked, as the fruit became ripe and was stolen by the boys. 'Then you ought to have taken more care of it,' he will reply; `how many okes of plums were there upon those trees?' We shall have to guess the amount. `Nonsense!' he will exclaim to whatever figure we may mention, 'there must have been double that quantity: I shall write down 1500 (if we declared 1000), which will split the difference.' ("Splitting the difference" is the usual method of arranging an Oriental dispute, as instanced by Solomon's well-known suggestion of dividing the baby.). "We shall protest," continued the monks, "and this kind of inquisitorial haggling will take place concerning every tree, until the valuer shall have concluded his labour, and about one-third more than the actual produce of the orchards will have been booked against us; upon which we must pay a tax of 10 per cent., at the same time that the risks of insects, rats, and the expenses of gathering remain to the debit of the garden. In fact," said the poor old monks, "our produce is a trouble to us, as personally we derive no benefit; the public eat the fruit, and the government eats the taxes." There were curious distinctions and exceptions in this arbitrary form of taxation: if a fruit-tree grew within the monastery courtyard it was exempt; thus the great walnut-tree beneath which we camped was free. It was really cheering to find that we were living under some object that was not taxed in Cyprus; but the monk continued, and somewhat dispelled the illusion . . . "This tree produced in one year 20,000 walnuts, and it averages from 12,000 to 15,000; but when the crops of our other trees are estimated, the official valuer always insists upon a false maximum, so as to include the crop of the courtyard walnut in the total amount for taxation." The potatoes, like all other horticultural productions, are valued while growing, and the same system of extravagant estimate is pursued.