368 COFFEE. 



cayed so that it is more like a slab than a tree, and this thin, shriv- 

 elled, one-sided thing is filled with knots or rather knot-holes, so 

 that it looks like a piece of perforated paper on a large scale, yet 

 the tops seem to flourish and bear good crops. In one instance I 

 saw where a tree had positively grown itself inside out ; that is, 

 had warped and twisted a large portion of the trunk so that what 

 was originally the inside of the tree was now upon the outside, 

 while the bark had exchanged places and was growing on the 

 concave surface, with only a narrow slit to admit the light and air, 

 and in numbers of instances the trees had grown themselves out of 

 their original centre of gravity, taken a new start at right angles, 

 wasted away until the substance of the wood in the trunk would 

 no longer support the branches, and stone colmmns had been built 

 to support them at the point where the large limbs began to 

 branch off. 



Many travellers from India to Europe disembark at Erindisi 

 and make a short Italian tour, completing the rest of theirjourney 

 by rail, and do a little sight-seeing in Italy. The railway along 

 the eastern coast leads directly up to Yenice, which, aside from 

 Eome, is probably the most interesting and most frequented city of 

 Italy. Founded soon after the fall of the Roman empire upon 

 a number of small islands in a lagoon at the head of the Adriatic, 

 it gradually prospered and deA'eloped until the necessity for a 

 constitutional form of government was felt, and in the year 697 

 the first Doge, or President, was elected. For eight hundred 

 years it continued to grow and prosper, notwithstanding occasional 

 wars and reverses, and during the fifteenth century was the grand 

 focus of the entire commerce of Europe, and indeed of the world. 

 The city of Yenice proper numbered 200,000 inhabitants, pos- 

 sessed 300 sea-going vessels with 8,000 sailors, and 3,000 smaller 

 craft with 17,000 sailors, as well as a fleet of war-galleys manned 

 by 11,000 men. In the sixteenth century the power of Yenice, 

 however, began to dechne, and its commerce was gradually super- 

 seded by that of the Portuguese, in consequence of the discovery 

 of the Cape of Good Hope route to India. Still for two hundred 

 years longer Yenice continued to exercise a considerable influence 

 throughout Europe, but from this time forward her commerce 

 practically ceased, and for the past two hundred years she has 



