¹ It would seem from Strabo's words (p. 639), that the island was in his time even more sparsely populated than at the present day. The modern Nicanots are nearly all of them charcoal-burners, and show considerable enterprise, combining together to rent forests in Asia Minor, and establishing themselves there until they have converted them into charcoal. This, of course, involves their being usually absent from home, and agriculture suffers, just as it does in Garpathos, where nearly all the men, and not a few of the unmarried women, are stone-masons, travelling in troups all over Greece and the Archipelago in search of work.