The Olive-Mill 



five or six feet long, usually forked at the smaller end, 

 and is held a little above the middle, with the heavy knob 

 on the ground ; so that when you walk, it swings between 

 its planting-places like a pendulum. The one the marques 

 used was a sort of hereditary rural sceptre, which had 

 descended to him from the hands of his father and grand- 

 father, and very likely from their fathers and grandfathers 

 to them. 



We first went to see the olive-mill. In form it very 

 much resembles a chocolate-mill : — a huge wheel of granite, 

 shaped like the thick end of a cone, rolls round a piece of 

 timber on which it is pivoted, being drawn by a mule 

 yoked to a crooked beam. This beam, jutting from the 

 central timber, bends over the wheel, receiving half-way 

 the other end of its axle. 



On the opposite side of the central timber (which is also 

 pivoted in the stone crushing-floor and a beam of the roof) 

 there is a wooden funnel full of olives. This keeps slowly 

 laying down the plump purple berries, which the roller, as 

 it comes round, crushes with a fat crackling sound, not 

 unlike that which proceeds from the basting of meat, only 

 on a larger scale. 



The pulp, as it accumulates, is shovelled off and placed 

 in layers between round mats under the press. These mats 

 are about six feet in diameter, and have a hole in the middle. 

 When there is a sufficient pile of pulp and mat sandwiches, 

 the whole is wetted with hot water, and the press (an 

 immense lever, about forty feet long) comes down upon it, 

 being lifted at the other end by a screw with spokes like a 

 capstan. The oil, of course, floats on the surface of the 

 water and is run off into tanks. 



Having seen how the oil was made, we went out to see 

 how the olives were gathered, accompanied by Ramoncillo, 



78 



