"'Ambelakia, by its activity, appears rather a borough of Holland than a village of Turkey. This village spreads, by its industry, movement, and life, over the surrounding country, and gives birth to an immense commerce which unites Germany to Greece by a thousand threads. Its population has trebled in fifteen years, and amounts at present (1798) to four thousand, who live in their manufactories like swarms of bees in their hives. In this village are unknown both the vices and cares engendered by idleness; the hearts of the Ambelakiots are pure and their faces serene; the slavery which blasts the plains watered by the Peneus, and stretching at their feet, has never ascended the sides of Pelion (Ossa;) and they govern themselves, like their ancestors, by their protoyeros, (primates, elders,) and their own magistrates. Twice the Mussulmen of Larissa attempted to scale their rocks, and twice were they repulsed by hands which dropped the shuttle to seize the musket. "'Every arm, even those of the children, is employed in the factories; while the men dye the cotton, the women prepare and spin it. There are twenty-four factories, in which yearly two thousand five hundred bales of cotton yarn, of one hundred cotton okes each, were dyed (6138 cwts.) This yarn found its way into Germany, and was disposed of at Buda, Vienna, Leipsic, Dresden, Anspach, and Bareuth. The Ambelakiot merchants had houses of their own in all these places. These houses belonged to distinct associations at Ambelakia. The competition thus established reduced very considerably the common profits; they proposed therefore to unite themselves under one central commercial administration. Twenty years ago this plan was suggested, and in a year afterward it was carried into execution. The lowest shares in this joint-stock company were five thousand piastres, (between £600 and £700,) and the highest were restricted to twenty thousand, that the capitalists might not swallow up all the profits. The workmen subscribed their little profits, and uniting in societies, purchased single shares; and besides their capital, their labour was reckoned in the general amount; they received their share of the profits accordingly, and abundance was soon spread through the whole community. The dividends were at first restricted to ten per cent., and the surplus profit was applied to the augmenting of the capital; which in two years was raised from 600,000 to 1,000,000 piastres, (£120,000.)'