234 FROM THE HELLESPONT 
<^^^Ar. fertility of the island, filled with flowery, luxu- 
" r—^ riant, and odoriferous plants, and presenting a 
magnificent slope, covered with gardens from 
observed in their manner. But a great change for the better, in their 
genera] deportment, is to be attributed to their never being now exasperated 
by the attack of corsairs or pirates on the coast. 
" No people living under the same climate, and in the same country, 
can be so opposite as the Greeks and Turks. There is in the former a 
cringing manner, and yet a forwardness, disgusting to the gravity and 
seriousness of the latter. The Turks treat the Armenians, who conduct 
themselves generally with great propriety and decorum, with much less 
harshness than they shew to the Greeks. Their present condition is 
certainly not the most favourable point of view for considering the cha- 
racter of the Greeks; and their faults, which are those of their unfortunate 
situation, would disappear under more favourable circumstances, and a 
different government. When in oflSce and authority, they are not so 
devoid of insolence to their countrj-men as might be wished. The codja- 
bashis in the Morea are, many of them, tyrannical to the other Greeks. 
The treatment which the Jews experienced at their hands, in the time of 
the Greek empire, is that which the Greeks now meet vvith from the 
Turks. ' No one,' says Benjamin of Tudela, ' dares to go on horseback, 
but the Imperial physician ; and the Jews are hated in the town by all the 
Greeks, without any regard to their good or bad character.' p. 30. as cited 
hy 2\^iebithr. 
" Neither hay nor oats are known to the Turks ; nor has any nation in 
the East ever used them for their horses. ' They brought barley also and 
straw for the horses:' 1 A'/n^s iv. 28. Homer may be consulted, II. E. 
195; and Juvenal, >S'a/.viii. Qjumentis ordea lassi's'). Niebuhr sa}'s, 
he saw no oats in Arabia. I did not observe tobacco so much cultivated 
as corn and cotton. The tobacco-plantations require much attention, but 
are very productive. After gathering the leaves, the stalks stand and rot, 
and, by the salt which they contain, fructify the earth. The crop from a 
tobacco-plantation is esteemed worth t%\ice as much as the product of the 
same land sown with corn. An acre of moderately good ground is said to 
yield about two hundred okes of cotton : an oke is two pounds and tliree 
quarters; and the cotton may be worth nearly two piastres an eke. 
" The 
