TO RHODES. 233 
and the magnitude, of the gigantic masses on chap. 
. \ 1 i. 
the coast, but from the extreme richness and > ^ — ' 
Chios. 
appeared. I saw some by the road side ; and in the villages, young chil- 
dren made their appearance, with strings of copper money around their 
heads ; and the nails, both of their hands and feet, dyed of a reddish 
colour, with henna, the leaves of which are powdered and formed into a 
paste, and then applied. Tins is a custom of great antiquity : Hasselquist 
says he saw the nails of some mummies dyed in this manner. Although 
the Turks, in their intercourse with each other, strictly adhere to the 
practice of taking off their slippers in a room, (a custom of the Antients; 
see Martial, lib. iii. ' deposui soleas,') yet they dispense with it frequently 
in the case of European travellers. 
" Besides rice and fowls, it is possible to procure, at many of the villages 
and towns in Asia 3Iinor, Yowrt, or sour milk, called in Greek l^uyakx ; 
Cainiac, or coagulated cream, in Greek u^^oyaXu ; and soft cheese, ;^Xfc»g« 
rupi, a literal translation of the caseus viridis of Columella. Glutton is 
universally preferred to beef ; this, in general, is coarse and bad tasted: 
the former is double the price of the latter, and is two-pence the pound. 
" A Greek labourer receives from thirty-five to forty paras a day, nearly 
fifteen pence : he works only two-thirds of the year ; the other third con- 
sists of holidays. During the four fasts, of which that in Lent is the most 
strictly observed, he eats shell-fish, caviar (the roe of sturgeon), pulse, and 
anchovies. 
" I observed but few Greek villages in Asia IMinor : the Greeks all 
seek the great towns, to avoid more easily the different means of oppression 
resorted to by the Turkish Governors; whose short residence in their 
provinces is spent, not in countenancing or furtliering any improvement 
or plans of amelioration in the condition of those subject to them, but in 
exacting everj' thing they can, to repay tliemselves for the sum which the 
Porte takes from them ; and in carrying away what wealth they are able 
to amass. It is difficult to ascertain what sum any given province pays 
annually to the Porte : but a neai- conjecture may be made, by adding 
the Haralch (capitation-tax) to the sum wliich the Governor stipulates to 
pay every year. 
" The Turks, as far as my experience carried mc, shew no disposition 
to molest or offend a traveller. Sometliing contemptuous may at times be 
observed 
