WHERE CHRYSANTHEMUM POWDER IS MADE 
By Felix J. Koch 
V\ZHILE pater familias is repairing, at 
’ * home, to his favorite currant bush 
with the atomizer and the insecticide in a vain 
endeavor to combat the spring armies of in¬ 
sects, it may be interesting to sojourn in the 
little Dalmatian town of Sebenico, the one 
place in the world, probably, where the flowers 
get even with the “bugs” that are constantly 
stealing their honey. The flowers are here 
by the thousands and the armies of bugs by 
the tens of thousands, but in the last resort 
the flowers win out against overwhelming 
numbers, for from them is made an insect- 
powder, curious and unique, that is famous 
the world around. There are other things of 
interest in Sebenico, but none so much so as 
this and none that repay the peasants so well. 
A sail down the Dalmatian coast of Austria 
in May is a memory for a lifetime. After 
leaving Zara, the city of maraschino, one en¬ 
ters little lakelets of green sea, hemmed in by 
low grey or yellow hills, much the shade of the 
rock of Gibraltar, that soon give way to the 
islands of the famous Dalmatian archipelago. 
These islands are a sight in themselves—here 
and there they are terraced and green, hut for 
the most part they are cones or series of cones 
of the purest, most beautiful white rock, and 
rock alone, that 
s h i m mers and 
scintillates in the 
sunlight, until 
with the glisten¬ 
ing of the islets 
and the dancing 
motes on the sea 
and the deep blue 
sky behind, the 
eyes are fairly 
dazzled. What 
these islands can 
produce it is diffi¬ 
cult for the voy- 
ageur to see, but 
if one steer in 
close to shore he 
finds unsuspected 
ledges bearing the 
vine or hidden pockets that will grow some 
little hay, and from these things the peasants 
live, in the magnificent deserts of Dalmatia. 
Nor is their wine at all of poor quality, as 
one samples it on the steamer, but like the 
people it is opposed to violence, and one 
may drink a liter without feeling the effects. 
There are villages, too, on these islands, 
hamlets, coated externally with plaster of 
various hues, and olive groves ’long shore, 
that are ever tempting the kodak as they 
stand in relief against the hills of gravel and 
rock, and stone walls about the half-acre of 
crop. Like the Kentucky hills in the spring¬ 
time, when the snow is half melted and the 
patches of gray and green and white com¬ 
mingled, seem the islands from the deck. 
Sea-urchins abound in their waters, and the 
youngsters reach down and catch them for 
you for a kreuzer, or sell them already dried. 
Then suddenly the scene changes. After a 
dinner spoiled by foreknowledge that cook 
and stoker are one and the same, one comes 
on deck in a wilderness of deserted island hills. 
Man’s hand is nowhere visible, nor does there 
seem chance of his coming, for everywhere 
there are only the white, barren, uncompro¬ 
mising chains of rock. One is in the Georgian 
Bay again, or 
among the Thou¬ 
sand Islands, only 
here there is no 
tender covering of 
verdure, no cot¬ 
tages or summer 
life,—and yet the 
scene is equally 
beautiful because 
of • its exquisite 
simplicity of color 
and shape. And 
this is the land of 
the death-dealing 
flowers, the source 
of the chrysanthe¬ 
mum powder of 
commerce, alias 
“Persian”powder. 
THE POWDER MILL 
232 
