Crete has certainly lost much in population and wealth, and the epithet of the “isle of a hundred cities,” which it received from the ancient Greeks, no longer applies to it. Miserable villages occupy the sites of the ancient cities, their houses built from the materials of a single ruined wall, whilst immense quarries had to be opened in order to supply the building materials required in former times. The famous “labyrinth” is one of the most considerable of these ancient quarries. Crete, in spite of its great fertility, exports merely a few agricultural products, and nothing now reminds us of the fruitful island upon which Ceres gave birth to Plutus. The peasants are the reputed owners of the land, but they take little heed of its cultivation. Their olives yield only an inferior oil, and though the wine they make is good in spite of them, it is no longer the Malvoisie so highly prized by the Venetians. The cultivation of cotton, tobacco, and of fruit of all sorts is neglected. The only progress in agriculture which can be recorded during the present century consists in the introduction of orange-trees, whose delicious fruit is highly appreciated throughout the East. M. Georges Perrot has drawn attention to the singular fact that, with the exception of the olive-trees and the vine, the cultivated trees of the island are confined to particular localities. Thus chestnuts are met with only at the western extremity of the island; vigorous oaks and cypresses are confined to the elevated valleys of the Sphakiotes; the valonia oaks are met with only in the province of Retimo; Mount Dicte alone supports stone-pines and carob-trees; and a promontory in South-eastern Crete, jutting out towards Africa, is surmounted by a grove of date-trees—the finest throughout the Archipelago. [Illustration: Fig. 29.—CRETE, OR CANDIA. Scale 1 : 2 470,000. The district inhabited by Mohammedans is shaded vertically.]