198 VEGETABLE SUBSTANCES. 



Four millions one hundred and fifty-eight thousand 

 gallons of olive oil were imported into this country 

 in the year 1S31, very nearly one-half of which was 

 retained for home consumption. 



The following details respecting the olive and the 

 oil trade have been communicated to us by a gentle- 

 man who lived a considerable time in the particular 

 part of Italy referred to. 



" All that part of Italy which may be called the 

 heel of the boot is little else than one continuous 

 olive grove. It forms an extreme point of the 

 Neapolitan kingdom, and is divided into two pro- 

 vinces, viz. Bari and Lecce, or La Terra d'Otranto. 

 Its principal ports are Bari, Brindisi (the ancient 

 Brundisium), Otranto, Gallipoli (now the most 

 important of them all), and Taranto (the ancient 

 Tarentum). Starting from Gallipoli, as I have 

 often done, and travelling to the Cape Santa Maria 

 di Leuca, or to Taranto, or to Lecce, a very large 

 city and the capital of one of the provinces, you 

 literally are scarcely ever ten minutes out of the 

 shade of olive-trees. The slight cultivation of grain, 

 &c., which is not nearly enough for the consumption 

 of that district, is carried on in the midst of olive 

 groves. Before and behind you, on hill or in hollow, 

 you see scarcely any thing but olivcti. I have stood 

 on the terrace of an old baronial castle at the town 

 of Parabita, and seen the olive grove spread around 

 me on every side for many miles, like a dull sea of 

 leaves. Though so much poetry is associated with 

 this emblem of peace, the tree itself is certainly 

 neither picturesque nor poetic; and travelling through 

 them for such a length of time with scarcely any 

 other object to relieve the eye, is excessively mono- 

 tonous and tedious. Starting again from the city of 

 Lecce to Otranto, or to Brindisi, you have olive 

 groves nearly the whole of the way; or going on 



