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Quality.

In starting an excavation one of the first considerations is the supply of labourers, and the selection of them. In some places it is difficult to persuade any one to work at first; either from distrust, or from being unaccustomed to regular employment. At Naukratis only a few men could be persuaded to try the work in the first week or two; but so soon as the villagers found that genuine gold coin was to be had, they swarmed up, and some five hundred demanded to be taken. The Egyptian is good at steady work, but the Syrian is very different, and it took some weeks at Tell Hesy to educate men into continuous regular digging. They would jump out of their holes every few minutes, and squat on the edge for a talk with the next man; and only a steady weeding out of about a third of them every week, gradually brought up the best of them into tolerable efficiency. In Greece such difficulties are even greater, and rational regular hard work cannot be reckoned upon, as in Egypt.