OF THE DISTRICT OF CA VALLA, TURKEY. 71 



dustry and trade. This can be justly appreciated only when the time, 

 labour, and capital employed in producing tobacco have been taken into 

 account, together with the relative values of the exported produce. In 

 a population of 250,000 souls, there is scarcely a family in the district 

 whose livelihood does not, at this day, depend more or less on the pro- 

 duction and trade of tobacco. 



In the sanjackof Drama, as throughout Turkey generally, the land is 

 for the most part owned by the tillers of the soil. Each peasant is 

 absolute owner of his five or ten-acre freehold, and the village commu- 

 nity of which he is a member constitutes a sort of small commonwealth 

 of peasant projDrietors, bound together for the defence of common rights 

 and interests, and for the performance of their duties as subjects of the 

 State. Although estates of several thousand acres in extent are occa- 

 sionally to be met, they occupy in the aggregate but a small portion of 

 the total surface. Small freeholds, independent of the village com- 

 munities, are rare, and only to be found in the vicinity of towns. 



The peasant freeholder cultivates his patch of ground with the assist- 

 ance of his family, and seldom resorts to the aid of hired labour. 

 There are peasants, however, who hold much larger areas of land, to the 

 extent of fifty, or even a hundred acres, requiring the employment of 

 hired labourers for their cultivation. The large owners utilize their 

 properties after the following system. The landlord stocks the farm, 

 provides agricultural implements, and defrays at his own cost the pre- 

 liminary expenses of tilling and preparing the ground for seed. Each 

 peasant does all else that may be needed on his particular allotment by 

 means of his own labour and that of his family, or by hired hands, in 

 tending and securing the produce. The crop, after deduction of the 

 tithes, is then divided in equal proportions between landlord and cul- 

 tivator. 



Under such a system, stimulating enterprize and exertion so slightly 

 on either hand, and with a languid administration, allowing almost un- 

 limited powers of oppression to the landlord, it is not surprising that 

 the peasantry on the large properties should be in a most wretched con- 

 dition ; nor, that with an unrivalled climate and soil to favour him, a 

 resident landlord rarely derives seven or eight per cent, return on the 

 fee-simple of his estate, and the absentee a much smaller income. In 

 some rare instances proprietors let farms on the English system of a 

 fixed rent in money ; but tenant-farmers, as a class, in the English 

 acceptation of the term, are unknown. 



The growing importance of the trade, consequent on the steadily 

 increasing demand for this species of tobacco in the home and foreign 

 markets, is the cause that fresh land is yearly brought under this kind 

 of husbandry, to a degree indeed which has rendered cereal and cotton 

 cultivations quite subordinate to this more lucrative investment for 

 capital and labour. Its culture may be extended almost unliinitedly 



