Democratic Sentinel, Volume 9, Number 1, Rensselaer, Jasper County, 30 January 1885 — Longevity in the Cyclades. [ARTICLE]

Longevity in the Cyclades.

We came to a low, whitewashed cottage, whore lives, high up on the mountain top, a tottering old man, ninetyfive years of age. He looks after a small gaaden, and whenever he wants anything he walks into Hermoupolis to do his shopping. Onr muleteer called him out and he came to welcome us; he was full of stories about the wonderful change* he had seen during his long eventful life; how he had fought for his country’s liberties; how lie had assisted in building the first for the refugees down by the harbor. When we left him, I asked onr muleteer if people frequently lived to be so old at feyra. “Yes,” was the reply, “an old woman died at 130 only a short while ago; in former years people lived so long that the aged had to be thrown down a mountain cLiff, which is still called Gerousi." This tradition of longevity in Syra is curious, and more especially so in connection with the slaughter of the aged. On the neighboring island of Koes it is well known that the old and useless members of society were obliged to swallow hemj lock when a certain age was reached. The Abbe della Rocca, one of the ■ Roman Catholic brethren in Syra, writj ing a centnry ago, tells us of the same | tradition existing then about the great I age and general healthiness of the Syriotes. Homer gives us the following testimony: There in the city, void of pain and fears. They rtwel r, and even as they wax In years Apollo coming with luh silvery bow Aim* with his sister th>; light-feathered spears Against them, and the sweet.life fades like snow. — Macmilan's Magazine.

The reputed site of the Garden of Eden, at the junction of the Tigris and Euphrates is now a sterile tract, where the onl/vegetable life consists of a clump of date trees near a very small and dirty villago called Gurana, at whioli the Turks maintain a garrison and a telegraph office. The inhabitants point out to stranger* the tree of knowledge—a moat sickly ’‘peciraen, bearing a small green berry which would eanso