The actual population of Greece may amount to 1,500,000 souls; that is to say, it includes about two-fifths of all the Greeks residing in Europe and Asia. The population is less dense than in any other country of Europe, including Turkey. Greece, at the epoch of its greatest prosperity, is said to have supported 6,000,000 or 7,000,000 inhabitants. Attica was ten times more populous at that time, and many islands which now support only a few herdsmen could then boast of populous towns. Sites of ancient cities abound on the barren plateaux, on the banks of the smallest rivulet, and crown every promontory throughout the ancient countries of the Hellenes, from Cyprus to Corfu, and from Thasos to Crete. The country, however, is being gradually repeopled. Before the war of independence, the population, including the Ionian Islands, amounted, perhaps, to 1,000,000; but battles and massacres diminished it considerably, and in 1832 the number of inhabitants was 950,000 at most. Since that epoch there has been an annual increase varying between 9,000 and 14,000 souls. This increase, however, is spread very unequally over the country. The towns increase rapidly, but several islands, and more especially Andros, Santorin, Hydra, Zante, and Leucadia, lose more inhabitants by emigration than they gain by an excess of births over deaths. The swamp fevers prevailing in continental Greece much retard the increase of population. Naturally the climate is exceedingly salubrious, but the water, in many localities, has been permitted to collect into pestilential swamps, and the draining of these and their cultivation would not only add to the wealth of the country, but would likewise free it from a dire plague.[20] Unfortunately agriculture progresses but slowly in Greece, and its produce is not even sufficient to support the population, still less to supply articles for export. And yet the cultivable soil of Greece is admirably suited to the growth of vines, fruits, cotton, tobacco, and madder. Figs and oranges are delicious; the wines of Santorin and the Cyclades are amongst the finest produced in the Mediterranean; the oil of Attica is as superior now as when Athene planted the sacred olive-tree; {82} but, excepting a little cotton grown in Phthiotis, and the raisins known as currants or Corinthians, which are exported from the Ionian Islands and Patras to the annual value of about £1,500,000, agriculture contributes but little towards the exports. One of the principal articles is the valonia, a species of acorn picked up in the forests, and used by tanners.