The population of the island is not proportioned to its extent: agriculture is there much neglected, and the olive trees are even abandoned to themselves without being pruned or manured. If the necessary care and attention were paid to these trees, as well as to the preparation of the oil, the quality would not only be infinitely better, but the harvest would also be more abundant.
The olives begin to ripen in the month of November, but do not fall off till towards the end of December or the beginning of January. This is the time when they are gathered; they then proceed to the mill in April, and the harvest is not considered as entirely at an end till the month of May. The purchases are made in February, but there are circumstances in which they take place six months in advance. This kind of speculation affords considerable advantages, but is also subject to great inconveniences, and requires a perfect knowledge of the inhabitants of the country, who are not always actuated by good faith. It is necessary to advance them part of the amount of their oil, but the comparison of the price of the article when these advances are made with the current one when it is delivered affords a profit of from 20 to 25 per cent.
Notwithstanding the little care the Corfiots take in the cultivation of their olives, these trees are nevertheless extremely abundant, and do not fail to furnish a considerable quantity of oil, which is the principal resource of the island, and the most interesting object of its trade. In abundant years the harvest is equal to 1,000,000 of jars; middling years, about 700,000; and in the most sterile ones, 500,000.
