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CHAPTER Χ. THE WINE DISTRICT OF LIMASOL. IN the fifteenth century the Cyprian vines were selected for the now celebrated vineyards of Madeira ; nothing can better exemplify the standard of industry and consequent prosperity than the vine, when we regard the identical plant in the hands of the Portuguese and in its original home in Cyprus under the Turkish administration. The first historical notice of the vine occurs when Noah, stranded upon Mount Ararat, took advantage, upon the first subsidence of the waters, to plant a vineyard ; and, according to the curt biblical description, it grew, produced, and the wine intoxicated the proprietor, all within a few days. It may not have occurred to the wine trade that this biblical fact proves that the consumption of wine had been among the first assumed necessities of the human race ; if Noah's first impulse upon landing suggested the cultivation of the vine, he was restoring to the world a plant that had been considered so absolutely important that he must have provided himself with either buds or cuttings in great quantities when he selected his animals for the Ark before the Deluge. If this is true, the use of wine must have been pre-historical, and its abuse historical ; the two purposes having

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