s for the production of a fine oil from their olives, which is
the staple commodity of the island, and of which they export
considerable quantities. By all accounts, nature, unassisted, may claim
the praise of this produce, for they are said to be careless
manufacturers. We went into one or two of the [Greek: ergasteria] to
witness the process of compression, but could not take it upon our
veracity to utter an opinion anent them. At least they seem in a fair
way to improve their wares; for the new consular agent of France (whom,
by the way, we took to his Barataria) is especially knowing in this
line, and hopes to produce, in a short time, oil that shall be equal to
that of France or Lucca.

After all this talk about the impossibility of travelling in the summer,
it augurs ill for our account of Adalia, to say that it was the very
heat and rage of summer when we landed there. But as we were not
volunteers on the occasion, we did not choose our own season. Like the
fifty thousand Cossacks who marched off to the East Indies, not because
they liked it, but because they were sent, we were saved all the trouble
of deliberation; and once arrived at the spot, we were sufficiently old
stagers to adapt ourselves to the ways and means of the place. I
remember that we were delighted at the start: catching at the prospect
of change, as at the hope of improvement. Certainly things were bad
enough with us in Smyrna bay at that time. The pitch was boiling in the
seams, the water was hissing along-side; the sky seemed an entire sun,
so truly were the fiery rays rendered back from every part of the
glowing concave. The sea-breeze, one's only solace under such
circumstances, was continually forgetting to come. In spite of the
common profession, that without the sea-breeze it would be impossible to
live hereaway, we continued to pant through days of breezeless
existence. At this time it was that I arrived at the conclusion which is
now established in the code of my economics, that the endurance at
Calcutta or Port Royal is a joke compared with what one has to undergo
in these milder latitudes. The dweller in Anatolia has no such range of
Fahrenheit to alarm him into defensive measures, and thus he falls
comparatively unprepared into the conflict with the dog-days. Your
Bengalee mounts defences of _tattees_ and punkahs that cool down a hot
wind, or whistle air into presence in a trice. Whereas in this part of
the world, as the Sirocco blow