eight hundred families, but he does not seem to have ever been in the village. Aravandinos whose book was published in 1857 gives seven hundred families. Weigand an impartial authority says that in 1887 there were no more than three thousand present in the village. But as we shall see below there were special reasons just at that time why the Samarina families in Thessaly did not go up for the summer. The official Roumanian account of the Vlach communities in Macedonia says that the population varies from four thousand five hundred to six thousand. To-day the village numbers some eight hundred houses and during the three summers (1910–1912) that we spent there many houses were re-built and some new ones erected. Thus the population seemed likely to continue to increase provided no serious political disturbance occurred to check it, as has happened recently since the autumn of 1912. In 1911 some thirty houses were built, and all the eight hundred were inhabited, some by more than one family. Consequently we believe that in the height of the season in July and August there must have been at least five thousand souls in the village. Many do not reside for the whole summer, but come up for a month only. Against the natural increase of the population has to be set the loss continually caused by the settlement of families in the towns of the plains, the wandering of the young men in search of work in their trades and emigration to America. The recent increase in the population between 1908 and 1912 was perhaps due more to the improved political conditions, for in those years several families were beginning to come up for the summer, a thing which many of them had not done for long years together.
On the whole life at Samarina, as noted long ago by Pouqueville, is hardly taken in a serious spirit, and the four summer months during which the village is gathered together each year are looked upon by young and old alike as a time to be spent mainly in enjoyment. At the same time business and work are by no means neglected, for most bring up with them all the appliances for carrying on their trades, and those who abandon the shops or whatever their work may be, and come
