32 



SEVILLE AND 



do not earn such wages at every kind of work. The 

 crop of maize appeared, from the quality of the grain, to 

 have been a fine one, and one of the persons told me 

 that it had yielded at the rate of about 50 bushels an 

 acre. The olives on the trees we examined, in the 

 neighbourhood of the convent, did not appear to have 

 suffered so much as those of Xeres. The man who 

 showed us the presses, said that there was no such thing 

 as a failure in the crop of olives every second year. He 

 said they had all suffered very much this year, in conse- 

 quence of the rains in summer, but that even this year 

 their olives had not failed. On returning we struck off 

 into a field where a lot of men and horses were employed 

 in treading out millet. There were nine horses, and a 

 driver to every three. They were driven round the circle 

 all abreast ; the whole superficies of a very large circle, 

 from the centre outwards, being covered with the tops of 

 the millet which had been cut off with very little of the 

 straw. They had begun about mid-day and would 

 finish at night. The produce would be about 80 fane- 

 gas — 160 bushels. Many of the fields in this neigh- 

 bourhood are cultivated with corn crops under the 

 olive trees, and they say that the crop is not injured by 

 the latter. The olives are never manured unless the 

 ground under is cultivated, and then they of course 

 receiv^e a share of the advantage which is intended for 

 the corn. 



Having been told by the merchant to whom I brought 

 a letter of introduction that a Spanish nobleman, the 

 Marquis del Arco Hermoso, had introduced the Florence 

 mode of preparing oil, which he had learnt during a 

 residence in Tuscany, I determined on visiting his plan- 

 tation, which lay beyond the town of Jlcala, about four 



