Cyprus, as I Saw It in 1879

by Sir Samuel White Baker

I am at this moment looking down from the shade of the great walnut-tree upon the terraced gardens and orchards beneath, which are rich in potatoes of excellent quality, onions, beet-root, &c.; together with walnuts, pears, apples, plums, filberts, figs, and mulberries. The pears and plums are of several varieties, some will ripen late, others are now fit to gather, but nothing can be touched until the valuer shall arrive; he is expected in ten days; by which time many of the plums will have fallen to the ground, and the swarming rats will have eaten half the pears. The shepherds' children and the various monastery boys live in the boughs like monkeys, and devour the fruit ripe or unripe, from morning till evening, with extraordinary impunity; women who arrive from the low country with children to be christened place them upon the ground, and climb the pear-trees; neither colic nor cholera is known in this sanctified locality. The natives of the low country who arrive at the monastery daily with their laden mules from villages upon the other side of the mountains, en route to Limasol, immediately ascend the attractive trees and feast upon the plums; at the same time they fill their handkerchiefs and pockets with pears, &c., as food during their return journey. "There will not be much trouble for the valuer when he arrives," I remarked to the monks, "if you allow such wholesale robbery of your orchards."

"On the contrary," they replied, "the difficulty will be increased; we never sell the produce of the gardens, which is kept for the support of all those who visit us, but we have much trouble with the valuation of the fruits for taxation. It is hard that we shall have to pay for what the public consume at our expense, but it will be thus arranged. . . . The valuer will arrive, and he will find some trees laden with unripe fruit, others that have been stripped by plunder; the potatoes, &c., will be still in the ground. We shall have a person to represent our interests in the valuation as a check upon the official; but in the end he will have his own way. We shall explain that certain trees are naked, as the fruit became ripe and was stolen by the boys. 'Then you ought to have taken more care of it,' he will reply; `how many okes of plums were there upon those trees?' We shall have to guess the amount. `Nonsense!' he will exclaim to whatever figure we may mention, 'there must have been double that quantity: I shall write down 1500 (if we declared 1000), which will split the difference.' ("Splitting the difference" is the usual method of arranging an Oriental dispute, as instanced by Solomon's well-known suggestion of dividing the baby.).

"We shall protest," continued the monks, "and this kind of inquisitorial haggling will take place concerning every tree, until the valuer shall have concluded his labour, and about one-third more than the actual produce of the orchards will have been booked against us; upon which we must pay a tax of 10 per cent., at the same time that the risks of insects, rats, and the expenses of gathering remain to the debit of the garden. In fact," said the poor old monks, "our produce is a trouble to us, as personally we derive no benefit; the public eat the fruit, and the government eats the taxes."

There were curious distinctions and exceptions in this arbitrary form of taxation: if a fruit-tree grew within the monastery courtyard it was exempt; thus the great walnut-tree beneath which we camped was free. It was really cheering to find that we were living under some object that was not taxed in Cyprus; but the monk continued, and somewhat dispelled the illusion . . . "This tree produced in one year 20,000 walnuts, and it averages from 12,000 to 15,000; but when the crops of our other trees are estimated, the official valuer always insists upon a false maximum, so as to include the crop of the courtyard walnut in the total amount for taxation."

The potatoes, like all other horticultural productions, are valued while growing, and the same system of extravagant estimate is pursued.

This system is a blight of the gravest character upon the local industry of the inhabitants, and it is a suicidal and unstatesmanlike policy that crushes and extinguishes all enterprise. What Englishman would submit to such a prying and humiliating position? And still it is expected that the resources of the island will be developed by British capital! The great want for the supply of the principal towns is market-gardens. Imagine an English practical market-gardener, fresh from the ten-mile radius of Covent Garden, where despatch and promptitude mean fortune and success: he could not cut his cauliflowers in Cyprus until his crop of unblown plants had been valued by an official and while he might be waiting for this well-hated spirit of evil, his cauliflower-heads would have expanded into coral-like projections and have become utterly valueless except for pig-feeding. I cannot conceive a more extravagant instance of oppression than this system of taxation, which throws enormous powers of extortion into the hands of the official valuer. This person can oppose by delays and superlative estimates the vital interests of the proprietors; if the property is large, the owner will be only too glad to silence his opposition by a considerable bribe; the poor must alike contribute, or submit to be the victim of delays which, with perishable articles such as vegetables, represent his ruin. Is it surprising that the villages of the desolate plain of Messaria are for the most part devoid of fruit-trees? We are preaching to the Cypriotes the advantage of planting around their dwellings, as though they were such idiots as to be ignorant that "he who sows the wind will reap the whirlwind." If they plant fruit-trees under the present laws they are planting curses which will entail the misery of inquisitorial visits and the most objectionable and oppressive form of an unjust taxation. As the law at present stands, the amount of fruit is ridiculously small, and the quality inferior, while cultivated vegetables are difficult to obtain. Can any other result be expected under the paralysing effect of Turkish laws? which unfortunately British officials have the questionable honour of administering.

I have heard officials condemn in the strongest terms the laws they are obliged to enforce. There are few persons who are obtuse to the sense of injustice, but at the same time the suggestion has been expressed that an extreme difficulty would be experienced should the taxes be collected in any other form than dimes. I cannot see the slightest truth in this disclaimer of responsibility for Turkish evils, and I believe the present difficulty might be overcome with little trouble by a system of rating the land ad valorem.

The soil and general value of properties in Cyprus vary as in England and other countries according to quality and position. There is land contiguous to market towns of much higher value than the same quality of soil in remote districts; there are farms supplied with water either naturally or artificially, which are far more valuable than others which are dependent upon favourable seasons. Land which formerly produced madder was of extreme value, and should have been adjudged accordingly; but why should not all properties of every description throughout Cyprus be rated and taxed in due proportion? The valuation should be arranged by local councils. The vineyards which produced the expensive wines should be rated higher than those of inferior quality. Gardens should be rated according to their distance from a market; fields in proportion to their water-supply and the quality of the soil. The Cypriotes do not complain of the amount of 10 per cent. taxation under the name of dimes, but they naturally object to the arbitrary and vexatious system of inquisitorial visits, together with the delays and loss of time occasioned by the old Turkish system. "Rate us, and let us know the limit of our responsibility"—that is the natural desire of the inhabitants. If the industries of the country are to be developed they must be unfettered; but if weighed down by restrictions and vexatious interference, they will hardly discover the benefit of a change to British masters.

Some people in Cyprus make use of an argument in favour of the present system of dimes or collecting in kind by tenths, which does not commend itself by logical reasoning. They say, "if you rate the land ad valorem, and establish a monetary payment of 10 per cent., you will simply burden the poor land-holder with debt during a season of drought, when his property will produce nothing. According to the present system he and the government alike share the risk of seasons; if the land produces nothing, there can be no dimes." It does not appear to have occurred to these reasoners that in such seasons of scarcity the taxation could be easily reduced as a temporary measure of relief according to the valuation of the local medjlis or council; but I claim the necessity of artificial irrigation that will secure the land from such meteorological disasters, and will enable both the cultivator and the government to calculate upon a dependable average of crops, instead of existing upon the fluctuations of variable seasons.

The district of Larnaca will offer a fair example of the usual methods of taxation, and as the figures have been most kindly supplied by the authorities of the division, they can be thoroughly relied upon.