376 0LEA EUROPJEA. 
winds. The beautiful plain of Athens, as seen towards the north-west from 
Mount Hymettus, it is said, appears entirely covered with olive-trees. Tuscany, 
the south of France, and the plains of Spain are the places in Europe in which 
this species was first cultivated. The Tuscans were the first who exported olive- 
oil largely, and thus it has obtained the name of " Florence oil." The particu- 
lar departments of France, in which the olive is most successfully cultivated, are 
those of the mouths of the Rhone, of the Var, of the Gard, and some others ; but 
it does not ripen its fruit to the north of a line drawn from the Pyrenees, near 
Narbonne, to the foot of the Little St. Bernard in the Alps ; nor in that part of 
France which may be considered as forming a portion of the basin of the Medi- 
terranean, and which is enclosed between that sea and the mountains of Ceven- 
nes and the Alps. The province of Suse, in Morocco, particularly in the neigh- 
bourhood of Mersa, produces a great abundance of olive oil, which is stated to be 
equal, in quality, to the best Florence oil. The olive grows in Britain ; but, from 
the severity of the climate, its character is changed. In its native country it is 
an evergreen; but in England, it loses its leaves. Indeed, it needs protection 
even in the mildest winters ; and it is only in the very warmest summers that it 
will produce fruit at all, which then does not ripen, and is of a very poor flavour. 
Thus Italy, south of the Apennines, and Turkey, south of the Hsemus, or a line 
running directly westward from the Black Sea to the Atlantic Ocean, in about 
latitude forty-four degrees, appears to be the general northern limit of the culture 
of this tree in Europe ; while on the Atlantic coast of North America, it scarcely 
reaches thirty-four degrees of latitude. Near Charleston, in South Carolina, the 
olive is usually rendered barren by the vernal frosts ; and in the southern parts of 
Florida and Louisiana, where it would be secure in winter, it languishes through 
the sultry heats of summer, for the want of those refreshing breezes which invig- 
orate this tree on the shores of the Mediterranean. But, doubtless, there are tracts 
in this country, uniting the conditions necessary for its growth, which have been 
demonstrated by several experiments one in particular, we here beg leave to 
reiate. While the Floridas were held by the English, in 1769, one Dr. Turnbull, 
a famous adventurer of that nation, brought over from Smyrna, a colony of fifteen 
hundred Greeks and Minorcans, chiefly of the former, and founded the settlement 
of New Smyrna, on Mosquito River. One of the principal treasures which they 
brought from their native land, was the olive. Mr. William Bartram, who visited 
this colony in 1775, describes that place as a flourishing town. Its prosperity, 
however, was of momentary duration. Driven to despair by hardships, oppression, 
and disease, and precluded from escape by land, where they were intercepted by 
the savages of the wilderness, a part of these unhappy exiles died, while others 
conceived the hardy enterprise of embarking for Havana in an open boat, and in 
three years their number was reduced to five hundred. The rest removed to St. 
Augustine, when the Spaniards resumed possession of the country; and, in 1783, 
a few decaying huts, and several large olive-trees, were the only remains to be 
seen of their wearied industry. In New California, on the Pacific, they cultivate 
the olive with success along the canal of Santa Barbara, in latitude thirty-four 
degrees north; and at Quito, in South America, near the equator, this tree, for 
eight thousand feet up the Andes, often attains the magnitude of the oak, but 
seldom or never bears fruit. 
The olive, which is called by Columella, the first among trees, has constituted, 
from the remotest antiquity, the pride of some of the most celebrated regions of 
the globe ; and, aside from the commercial value of its products, it is invested, 
both in sacred and profane history, with a thousand interesting associations. It 
appears to have been cultivated very early ; for we read of oil in the time of 
Jacob; and the patriarch Noah had sent out a dove from the ark, but she 
returned without any token of hope. Then 
