HISTORY ETHNOGRAPHY NATURE WINE-MAKING SITE MAP
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SIR SAMUEL WHITE BAKER
CYPRUS AS I SAW IT IN 1879
page 441

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level. Fish was simply fish. The best varieties and ί the most inferior were included in the same despotic I law. Salmon and stickleback, turbot and sprat, 5 herrings and soles, would (had they existed) have! been sold at so much a pound independent of their 1 qualities. The result was that if your servant went! to market to buy a fine species of fish, the seller 3 insisted upon his taking a due proportion of inferiori trash that was hardly eatable. "All was fish, that camel to the net; " little and big, good and bad, fetched thel same price. Such a system would ensure the worst of everything • what gardener would devote his energies to producing fine varieties, if a common field cabbage would rival I his choicest specimens at the same price, but at a I minimum of labour ? It was evident that the lowest class of vegetables would represent the garden produce, as this absurd I rule was a premium for indolence, whereas free competition, that would have assured high prices to the best qualities, would have stimulated the cultivators in I their productions. This argument was so indisputable that the chief commissioner (Colonel Warren, R.A.) ; determined at all hazards to introduce free markets into Limasol ; and although opposed to the conser-1 vative ideas of his municipal council, he carried out his views of a healthy competition and free and un-j restricted trade, which would awaken the Cypriotes, to the fact that labour properly directed would ensure the best qualities, that would benefit the producer by., securing the best prices. Self-evident facts in an English community may be utterly misconstrued in Cyprus. The Cypriote has . never been accustomed to unrestricted freedom, but

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