THE RAISIN INDUSTRY. 33 



high, with an average height of one and a half feet from the ground. 

 No stakes are used, and only occasionally is there seen a prop under 

 heavier loaded branches. 



The pruning is done in the winter, when the vines are comparatively 

 dormant. The superfluous branches are then cut away, and the 

 remaining ones are cut to two or three eyes each. The cultivation was, 

 until lately, performed in the simplest way with pick and spade. The 

 first digging is done, in January, at which time also the ground is 

 manured. This is done by digging pits and trenches in the vineyard, 

 which are filled with goat and camel dung. These trenches remain 

 open for a month or more, and are after that time filled in. The 

 first digging in the soil is done in November, the second one in January 

 and February, when, in leveling the ground, it is at the same time dug 

 over again one foot or more. The third or last digging is per- 

 formed in March, when simply the weeds are spaded under. Of late 

 years, vineyardists from other Mediterranean districts have settled in 

 Smyrna and brought with them better methods. Greek farmers have 

 especially done much to improve the old ways of cultivation used by 

 the slovenly or ignorant natives. 



In May, the young shoots are pinched back after the grapes have set 

 well and began to develop. The pinching of the ends produces a 

 second crop, which, besides being later, also consists of smaller 

 grapes than the first. All sterile and inferior shoots are then cut off, 

 and this is repeated during the summer in order that the vines may not 

 be weakened unnecessarily. The vines come into bearing in the third 

 year, begin to pay expenses in the fourth year, and leave a profit in 

 the fifth year after being set out. In the seventh and eighth years the 

 vines are considered in full bearing. 



The Sultana grapes begin to ripen in July. The vintage begins 

 towards the end of July, and lasts until the middle of August. 

 Other varieties of grapes are later, lasting from the middle of August 

 to the end of September, their vintage seldom lasting as late as the first 

 week of October. The first raisins are ready about August ist, and 

 the last Sultanas are all in by Septejuber ist, the other varieties of 

 raisins coming in later. 



Dipping, Drying and Curing. The curing of the grapes into 

 raisins requires great care, and nowhere is any more skill shown than 

 in Smyrna. Its raisins are the most beautiful of any, their splendid 

 appearance and transparency being due to the process employed. The 

 drying is done on drying-floors, which sometimes consist of the bare 

 ground only, at other times of elevated beds of earth a foot or so 

 high. When the soil is not naturally hard and suitable for drying- 

 floors, it is first prepared by cutting off the weeds, and is then 

 watered and packed until a smooth and hard surface is produced. 

 This hard bed is sometimes left bare, and at other times covered with 

 matting. In other places the grapes are dried on canvas, or on 

 trays made of the Italian reed, or of grasses. These trays are raised 

 on props three or four inches above the ground, and are loose so that 

 they may be put on top of each other to exclude the sun, rain or fog, 

 according to locality and season. Great stress is laid upon having the 



