Page:Travels & discoveries in the Levant (1865) Vol. 1.djvu/345

Rh the ordinary sponge from 15 to 50 piasters the oke. Before the Russian war, the fine sponge was worth from 70 to 80 piasters the oke, and the coarser sort from 10 to 25. The annual value of the sponges exported by the island of Syme is reckoned at about 2,500,000 piasters (£21,186). The small island of Chalce exports to the value of from 500,000 to 600,000 piasters (£4,237 to £5,084), and the island of Castel Rosso rather less. The Calymniotes call the sponge frutta di Calymno. Their island, the greater part of which is very barren and does not produce more than one-third of the corn it consumes, has, since the Greek revolution, been constantly increasing in wealth and population from the development of the sponge trade. The present number of inhabitants is reckoned at about ten thousand, of whom about half are males. The roving and varied life of the sponge-divers, and the address and courage required in their calling, render them very much more intelligent than the ordinary peasantry of the Sporades. On the other hand, the large profits of the sponge fishery in good years rather lead them to despise agiricultural pursuits, and they leave much of the operations of husbandry to be performed by women, passing their time in winter in the cafes, where they sit smoking over a pan of charcoal, and recounting the singular adventures which they have met with in the course of their rambles, and which give an Odyssean character to the lives of some of them. Most of the seafaring men bring back a pocketful of Greek coins after the summer cruise,