House and Garden 
ANOTHER CRAFT 
enormous. It only takes eight men, all told, 
to operate one of the largest mills. Electricity 
is coming more and more into use, and soon 
even this small force will be reduced. As it 
is, the mills are working night and day the 
year around, and the odor of chamo¬ 
mile coming off' the roofs when the 
Bowers are drying is enough, of itself, 
to convince the visitor of the magni¬ 
tude of the industry. Why some 
enterprising American could not do 
much the same by organizing chil¬ 
dren into pickers of the chamomile 
now going to waste along the turn¬ 
pikes in our Middle West it is diffi¬ 
cult to see. 
Chrysanthemum powder is used 
at present not only as an ordinary 
insecticide, but for the preservation 
of leather and of rabbit skins, in the 
manufacture of certain anilines, and 
also as a rival of camphor for the 
preserving of furs over the summer. 
Needless to say, and also sad to 
relate, charity does not begin at 
home, in Sebenico, and the rare tourist at the 
hotel longs, frequently, in the wee small hours 
of the night, for some of its famous insecticide 
for instantaneous application. The people 
hereabouts are Dalmatian Croats, speaking 
Italian and Croatian almost exclusively, and 
do not possess the virtues of cleanliness that 
the genuine Dalmatian and Croatian has. 
Much of the powder that is exported to the 
United States from here is worthless, being 
made of the stems of the Hungarian flowers, 
and selling at 1 rieste at five to ten dollars the 
hundredweight, whereas the closed flowers’ 
produce sells at twenty-eight dollars and a 
fraction, and the half-opened at a little over 
twenty. According to our consul at Trieste 
the total receipt of powder at that port in 1900, 
the last date of definite report, amounted to 
11,300 quintals. 
Sebenico, in addition, has a carbide industry 
of some size; but more interesting to the 
stranger is the macaroni plant, operated after 
Dalmatian custom, and affording the people 
the largest part of their food. From the 
forcing of the dough through the long, narrow 
tubelets of a steel “log” to its drying on heavy 
blue paper on the shelves of revolving turn¬ 
stiles and the packing of the rattling, dried 
macaroni in the deep circular hampers, the 
process is an interesting one. 
Some twenty-eight varieties of “ milk 
doughs” and four of macaroni, each of the 
thirty-two articles sub-divided into three 
STREET LIFE IN SEBENICO 
234 
