The Portland daily press. [volume] (Portland, Me.) 1862-1921, 1897-08-04
MAKING ALTAR OF ROSES.
4 Great Harvest Time in Southeastern
Europe.

Bulgaria and RoumeIia Are Centres of the
Industry-The Process of DistilIation
and the Great Value of the Fragrant
Product.
(From the St. Louis Globe-Democrat.
Gathering in the rose crop in southeast
Europe is now in progress and in the re-
gions where roses are grown as COM
mercial product the rose harvest is as
much of an event as the strawberry crop
in some parts of the United States. 1t is
estimated that from the middle of May
until the middle of July over three-quar-
tiers of million of people, mostly women
and girls, are employed in gathering the
roses, and the fact that this flower, gener-
ally esteemed solely for its beauty, should
by means of its petals, furnish employ
ment and bread to so many people is one
of the most singular phenomena of our
complicated civilization. The belle in
Paris, London, or New York needs a per-
fume, and the gazelle-eyed daughters of
the Ganges, the jetty negro women of
E gypt, the veiied wives of the tawny
Arabs in southern Algeria; French and
Spanish peasant beauties in Herault and
Bouches-du-R hone; italian girls of
Lombardy; maids not exactly of Athens,
but of Greece and It's isles; the wives of
turbaned Turks and shabby capped Bull
garians, all contribute to fill the demand.
The fair lady to whom the essence or
altar Of roses is only delightful perfume
has little idea of the labor necessary to
produce it, of its importance to the coun
try where it is made, or of the races of
people who, through its production, con-
tribute to her pleasure. 1t is, however,
but one illustration of the fact that no
partssof the worlds inhabitants is indie
pendent of the rest. Just as thousands of
men and women in Su1natra and Borneo,
in Ceylon and India, find the means of
subsistence from the taste of the civilized
races for pepper, so men and women earn
bread in Asia and Africa because in
France, England, and America fashiona-
BILE people have a taste for a rich perfume.
The antiquity of the rose is so great
that all account of it's origin has been
lost 1t is not mentioned in the Biblical
writings earlier than the reign of Solo
mon, butithe ;allusion to it then made is
such as to indicate that the flower had al
ready been known, for the essence of roses
was extensively used in Jerusalem and
Judea during the reign sof the luxurious
and much married king. In Egypt the
rose is depicted on number of very
early monuments, believed to date from
5000 to $500 B. c., and in the tomb of an
| Egyptian princess, disinteIred aayear ago
in southern Egypt. several Theoretically
sealed walls were found, which, when
opened, contained genuine altar of roses,
SO that the moder claims for the discov.
cry of this delicious perfume are vain.
Rose water, OF the essence of roses, is
mentioned by Homer in the ''Iliad;'
Homer and Solomon were nearly contem-
poraneous. Both the Greeks and Hebrews
probably borrowed the idea of its manu-
facture from the Egyptians, and these,
for aught anybody can tell, may have had
it from the Indians or from the Chinese
for the latter claim for each of their dis
coveries and inventions a most marvellous
not to say incredible, antiquity. The
rose is one of those flowers which, by the
people of every land, are taken for grant
ed as SO well known as to need no de.
scription and hardly mention, for 1t i.
a singular fact that every continent or
the globe, with the solitary exception Of
Australia, produces wild roses Even the
frozen regions of the north, where the
| summer lasts but two or three months
and is at best a season which may be de
scribed as very late in the fall, produced
\ their wild roses, and travellers through
Greenland, Kamchatka and northern
ST IBERIA found in the proper season ar
abundance of blossoms, while the crews
of whaling vessels which call at Spitzber
gen come off shore with bouquets of thu
native Spttzbergen rose. All wild roses
are not of the same kind for there are
over 1000 species of the wild rose known tt
| botanists and the varieties are innumer
| able.
As commercial product the rose il
| grown in many parts of the world. Not
only in the neighborhood of Paris, but
more extensively in the south of France
roses are cultivated for the purpose OF
manufacturing the altar, and over 3d. 900,
900 pounds of rose leaves are annually col
lected by the Frenchsfor the purpose Of
making rose water or the altar of rose.
| In~~Algiers and Tunis the rose was for.
merly grown much more than at present
for the competition of other places has
become SO severe that the Algerians and
1
ton to the geranium, which in that mild
climate, producing its flower nearly al
the year, is more profitable crop. The
valley Of Damascus yields fine quality
OF affair." and the,vale of Cashmere has foi
ages been famous not only for Its roses,
but also for the quality of Its product.
In northern and central India rose water
and altar are manufactured At Ghazi
pur. near Benares, there are miles upon
miles of rose gardens, really fields, In
which the rose is cultivated for the flow.
ers. In Italy and Sicily rose culture is
| practiced for the sake of the product, and
during the last twenty five OF, thirty years
the altar or essence of the rose has become
one of the most important commercial re-
| sources of Bulgaria. The rose fields OF
Roumania are found on the southern
slopes of the Balkans and the plains
which descend to the River Martha.
There is a district in Roumania over 100
miles long by 40 in width, which, by
climate and soil is singularly well adapt.
ed to the production Of the rose, and al
most the whole of this region is given up
to rose fields. The soil is a light loan,
| inclined to sandiness; the drainage is
good, while the cold winds from central
| Russia are DETECTED by the Balkans, that