Читать книгу The Raisin Industry - Gustavus A. Eisen - Страница 40

—The principal and only raisins of any great commercial importance which are produced by Greece are the currants. We have already spoken of their name, and its supposed origin from the town of Corinth, and of their having been mentioned by Pliny in the year 75 A. D. The currants must thus very early have been of considerable importance as a commercial product, although the great increase in their production is of more recent date. The crusades which brought the nations of the North in contact with the Orient and the South also spread the knowledge of the Grecian currants to the distant parts of Europe. After the Latin conquest, currants became a commercial article, and we have every reason to suppose that, as early as the beginning of the thirteenth century, currants had reached the English shores, and that in the middle of the fourteenth century the English trade was fully established. Raysins of Corauntz were quoted in 1374 at two pence and three farthings per pound, equivalent to one dollar and twenty-five cents in our money at its present value. In 1513, the first English consul was appointed at Chios, and from that time on a direct traffic was maintained between the Grecian Islands and the North of Europe. In 1582, Hakluyt writes that efforts had been made to introduce the coren plant or vine into England, but that the same failed to fruit. The first introduction of the Zante vine into England is supposed by Anderson to have taken place in 1533. In the end of the sixteenth century, the currant traders were in full intercourse with the Venetians on the Island of Zante, and the Turks on the mainland or Morea. In 1581, the Levant Company received a monopoly in the trade of the small fruits called currants, being the raysins of Corinth. According to Wheler, who traveled in the Ionian Islands in 1675, Zante produced enough currants to charge five or six vessels, Cephalonia three or four, and Nathaligo, Missolonghi and Patros one each. Some few were also brought down from the Gulf of Lepanto.

As to the native home of the currants, opinions have considerably differed. Some have supposed Zante or Naxos to have been the original home of this grape; while others, with better reasons, have held that their original home was Corinth. Beaujour, who was French consul in Greece in 1790, says: “The fruit is not indigenous to Morea. No writer before the sixteenth century mentions it, and the result of my inquiries is that the currant came from Naxos into the Morea about 1580. It is true no such plant now exists in Naxos, but it has similarly disappeared from the territory of Corinth, though it is very certain it was cultivated there in former days, when the Venetians held the country.” This account does not agree with the statements of Comte Grasset St. Sauveur, consul to the Ionian Islands from France in 1781. He states, in his History of the Ionian Islands, that “the first plants were imported from Corinth to Zante about two centuries ago” (or about 1580). There are no exact records of the time or of the introducer; but the date is fixed by the regulations of the Senate of Venice relating to custom duties. It is likely this introduction took place not much before 1553, and was caused by the hostility of the Turks, who then held Morea, to the merchant vessels of the other nations of Europe, who in fact forbade them any entrance to the Gulf of Corinth, the principal export place for the currants. Thus John Locke, who in 1553 describes Zante, speaks of other products of the island, but not of currants.

Hakluyt states that, in 1586, the chief commodities of the island were “oyle and currants.” The latter, then, must have been introduced some time in the middle of the sixteenth century. Lithgow, a Scotch traveler who in 1609 visited the islands and published an account of the same in 1633, informs us that, besides oyle and wine, Zante produced one hundred and sixty thousand chickens of currants, each chicken of gold being equal to nine shillings of English money. And he adds that the custom duties on those currants amounted to twenty-two thousand piasters (one piaster is equivalent to six shillings), a sum of money which those Islanders could not have afforded (they having been, not above sixty years ago, but a base, beggarly people, and in an obscure place) if it were not that in England there are some who cannot digest bread, etc., without these currants. This seems to imply that, since the introduction of the currant culture in the Island of Zante about the year 1550, the Zanteans had suddenly become comparatively wealthy. So suddenly had this important industry spread, that in 1610, according to Sandys, the chief export of both Zante and Cephalonia was currants. In 1612, Coryat says that “Zante is famous for its wine, oile and currants.” Fynes Moryson, in his “Itinerary” published in 1617, states that “the English merchant vessels exported currants from Zante and Cephalonia, and from Petrasso in the Gulfe of Corinth.” Tavernier says, in 1678, that, “Corinth exports great quantities of currants. Patras does the same, which is all the trade from those two places.” In 1682, Wheler states that “the ports of Patros, Nathaligo and Missolonghi, all three together having enough to lade only one good ship every year.” Randolph, in 1689, mentions that currants were first planted on the plains of Corinth, and that the plain about Vostizza produced corn, currants and wine. Of Zante, he says that it produced two thousand tons of currants. Thus it will seem as if, through the fostering care of the Venetians, the currant trade was transplanted from the mainland of Morea to the Islands of Zante and Cephalonia, there to become of almost national importance. Until the Turks were expelled from Morea, the latter never made any serious efforts to recover the lost trade. First in later times the culture of currants has again spread on the mainland, especially on the northern shore of the Gulf of Corinth, and to-day the combined production of the Morean vineyards is largely in excess of that of the Ionian Islands.

In our times the currants are exported either from the mainland of Greece, the Morea, the ancient Peloponnesus, or from the Grecian Islands,—Cephalonia and Zante. In Morea, the principal ports for the exportation of the currants are Patras and Vostizza, although other ports export a few. Even the Islands of Ithaca and Santa Maura contribute a few. Efforts have been made to extend the culture of the currant vine, and introduce it to other islands, but not with any great degree of success. This is entirely attributed to climatic conditions.