Page:Travels & discoveries in the Levant (1865) Vol. 1.djvu/315

Rh As he is neither a trader nor a mariner, his transactions are of a simple nature, and he is seldom involved in litigation.

The Mytileniote, if he is a landholder, is generally a cultivator of olives. But this tree is uncertain in its yield. A full crop cannot be expected on the average more than once in three years. Hence every one in Mytilene who owns olives is forced, after converting his crop into money, so to invest the proceeds as to get a profitable return during the barren years.

There being neither public securities nor banks in which investments can be made, the cultivator of olives must either trade with his money himself or lend it on such security as mortgages on land or ships. But as there is no certainty in the administration of justice, such securities cannot be made as safe as the law makes them in most parts of Europe. The debtor, if he enjoys the protection of some powerful member of the Mejlis, evades the foreclosing of a mortgage, contrives a fraudulent bankruptcy, and, not unfrequently, denies his own signature with unblushing effrontery. The natural results of this speculative style of trading are a very low standard of commercial morality, an exorbitant rate of interest, ranging from 12 to 24 per cent., and a passion for petty litigation. When a whole community is so absorbed in this kind of paltry trading, the general calibre of mind is very much that of the old usurer, of whom Aristophanes has given us so graphic a portrait in his "Nubes," and the base low cunning of the Mytileniotes has gained