With the Serbs in Macedonia

THE SIMPLE LIFE 207
Naoussa district a timber company under
English management has shown what industry
and energy can accompHsh, getting their timber
down from the mountains by means of a cable
railway which cost them twelve thousand
pounds. But these are only drops in the
ocean.
The staple industry, of course, is agriculture.
Everybody grows maize, and the crops are
generally good and vineries are everywhere.
Tobacco is cultivated with great success, and
tomatoes, melons and gourds are plentiful.
Figs are disappointing, apples are poor, plums
coarse, and potatoes infrequently met with.
Beans are a big crop and there is a queer sort of
spinach much in favour. A fair amount of
wheat, oats and barley is grown ; opium and
millet are largely cultivated, and in some places
there are rice-fields, and a little cotton.
Most of the orchards are mulberry orchards,
cultivated for the silk-worm industry, which is
very extensive. The caterpillars are kept dry
and warm on benches in sheds, which are really
part of the one-story thatched houses. There,
clinging to leaves and twigs by the thousand,
they spin their cocoons and are fed on young
mulberry leaves. It is curious and rather
revolting to stand in one of those semi-dark
sheds and look at those thousands of fat white