CYPRUS.

Bruce Herald, Volume XI, Issue 1077, 10 January 1879, Page 7

CYPRUS.

By W. Hepwobth Dixon. h : ■• -# No. 111. My home, hospital, asylum, is a fair example of the higher class of house in Cyprus ; the genuine .n&thre house untouched by influences from a foreign source. It is not a konak, not an official residence of any sort; bu!&sucli a private house as the better sort of Greek might build, and the richer class of Turk might live in. It is neither new nor old as houses might be called in England, where we build of brick and stone. I set it down at forty or fifty years ; but this is eld for Cyprus, where nearly all the dwellings are built of frail and perishable ifuff. All villages here are built of mud— mud mixed with straw, dried in the sun, and cut into large square cakes, a cross between the hovels built of sun-dried bricks on the Nile, and the adobe cabins raised on the Colorado and the Sacramen|o^Towns % Cyprus are partly built with stone ; the konak and the magazines are always built of stone ; but even these pretentious edifices last but a little while, the native red sandstone and white limestone being almost equally friable when they are exposed to this semi-tropical sun. Nothing in the way of edifice endures as churches and castles endure in England, Italy, and France. Cyprus had once a hundred temples of the gods ; temples of Aphrodite, temples of Jupiter, temples of Isis, temples of Apollo. They stood on the sea shores, on the great plains, and on the ! mountain tops ; but lime and heat and rain have wasted them into dust. No vestige of these temples now remains Constructed by Tvrian and by Greek, brothers of the men who built the tower of David, and the temple of Athena?, they are not the less all gone. The masons of Cyprus had to build in limestone — not in granite, not in marble. At the present hour no Phcenecian, no Egyptian, no Greek edifice stands above the ground, even in a state of ruin — all are dust. The only ruins that exists are graves ; and these are dusfc outside, whatever of treasuries of gold work, terra cotta, bronse, or bone they may conceal within their silent caves. Unlike Palestine, Cyprus has levelled the Crusaders' lines and works. Even the later efforts of the Lusignian Princes and Venetian Governors are in ruins, bigger and nobler, yet but little more enduring, than the Turkish konak in the town, the Turkish blockhouse on the coasb. It is not surprising, therefore, that my asylum, though the oldest dwelling in the neighbourhood, dates no further back than forty or fifty years. Garden, waterwheel, aud house, are evidently of the same age ; and from the size of the apricot tree, in the pleasant shade of which I write these words, I have no hesitation in setting down the date. Transferring Lord Bacon's happy expression to Queen Elizabeth, ray house at Ormidia is a little older than Her Majesty Queen Victoria's auspicious reign. ]n the easy fashion found in every Oriental country, my house is a lean-to hitched against the side of a low hill. It is two storeys high — the lower floor devo-^ ted to stables and offices for the servants ; the upper storey to the family. A gallery runs the length of the upper floor. This gallery is our eating-room, smoking-room, and promenade. Openings at each end, and openings into the courtyard, through which the sea breezes flutter and fan by day and night, making it the coolest place in the house. Three rooms are on this gallery — a state room, a bedroom' and a store room. The bedroom is my room. A wing runs off on a ledge of hill at rightangles to the gallery, opening on the left hand into three smaller rooms, and on the right hand into an upper gaiden. From this uppei garden one can walk on to the roof of the lower parts of the villa, which roof is composed of layers of clotted earth laid down wet like mortar, and then scraped and beaten in with a wooden trowel, so as to bake under the hot sun into a sort of cake, which in favorable circumstances may be able to turn a steady downpour of rain. This roof is flush with the hillside, and you walk on it unawares. Bare as a cell in the convent of Mount Carinel is my little nest. Eight feet square, nine or ten feet high, the whitewashed walls are covered in by a ceiling of olive trees, roughly stripped of their leaves and twigs, but otherwise unshaped by (he joiner's art. These logs support a mat composed of reeds, woven with bines and parasites. Over this mat lie the layers of mud c.ike, which are to keep out rain. A small table, a straw chair, a large pitcher, and a tin basin, surround the" bed, which last utensil is of foreign origin, being the iron camp bed used by European travellers when travelling through the island with their tents. The floor is flagged ; the window has been glazed — a second European innovation. The primitive shutters are framed to ex- 1 elude the sun, but not the draught of wind. Large folding doors, frail as pieces of card paper, open into the state room That is my room, simple, not to say ascetic enough to satisfy a monk of Mar Saba. The state room adjoining my nest is of greater length, and done in showier style. This is our reception room. True, it has the same flagged floor ; the same whitewashed walla ; but the pine logs of the ceiing have been stripped of their bark, and trimmed into shape with an adze. A matt'ng of finer reeds covers the rafters. Maps, bookp, photographs, and a thermometer invade the walla ; intrusions also from a foreign land. Two large divans, j with straw stuffed cushions and capacious pillows, stand on either side. For the rest the room is bare and Oriental. A small cage containing a white canary hangi from a beam. The courtyard, entered from the road by

an archway, is inhabited by the usual cats dogs, mules, and ponies ; also by ancieni jars, more or less broken in the process ol digging put of dead men's grave^witl fragments of much — injured god's ;§an<3 godesses of ancient date Thought*)? the soil, these fragments of antiquity have been introduced by strangers' bands, and made in them crude Phcenecian, and perhaps Egyptian, outlines a curious conttast with a heap of Chinese paper lanterns, kept for lighting up on festal night. Beyond the courtyard drones the waterwheel, which keeps the adjoining gardens green and fruitful. Of the primitive Persian type, worked by a mule, which walks his endless circle from dawn of day till after sunset, this wheel resembles the machines with which the ancient patriarchs raised and scattered their supplies of water. Wells are semi-sacred in the East ; and the diggers of deep wells, even though their 'names may be forgotten, are remembered in the daily prayers of those who drink and live. The fluid from this wheel is carried along the adjacent garden, by a system of canals, aa simple, roundabout, and shallow as the ducts by which an Arab peasant entices the Nile into his cotton fie.d and melon yard. The water trickles from tree to tree : round every bole a cup is hollowed out, forming a tiny basin, so that every root is fed with moisture. Five or six acres of ground are covered with vines, olives pomegranates, figs, karobs, apricots, grapes, peaches, limes, and oranges. .The jewel of the garden, an enormous apricot tree, stands in the centre spreading its branches like an English oak, and offering welcome shade to any number of sunburnt pilgrims. When the fruit is ripe this tree is said to be at once a blessing and nuisance. People who are fond of apricots have their fill ; but overripe apricots dropping iv blobs and splashes on your face as you recline in the shade may be a little overmuch for the greatest epicures in the fruit. The canopy of boughs is more like that of a secluded nook in «n English wood than anything you might expect to find in a country too dry and hot for grass. Cactus and oleander peep at you through every opening in the leaves ; on every side you put your hand out and draw in what you want, according to your taste ; green grapes, dark coloured figs, pomegranates, ripe and ri;. en ing limes — so welcome to the pai'ched and fevered dps. The time of oranges has not come, but they are hereabouts, with promise to be ready when their season comes. Tliia coo' and verdant paradise is peopled by no obnoxious creature?, though at times some vermin frutn the outer world, some snake or fox, contrivea io break the covert, and to carry off an in nocent chick. The creatures proper to the garden are innumerable laiks, which break into their eong and twitter at the break ol' day, hush themeelves in their dpsh alnvidi »a s ion aa men are up aud iic their toil, to wake again as day is going down, and fill the evening air wiili resonance and song. Bees swarm about the garden, laying up their store of honey for a winter not too long. In a laud which gives no milk, and therefore knows not butter, honey is an object of man's greateat care; but bees, like negroes, Bedouin, and other thriftless beings, lay up no excess of food. A* best they have none to spare, and in this garden their greatest enemies are the hornets, who lie in wait for the returning bees, attack them, rifle the-n, and not unfrequenily kill them. The marauders o r e entrapped by very simple meaua. A bottle, half-filled wi f h waterj is sufficient to enbce them to their death. A home: is a thirsty thing, and turns to water as a drunken man to grog. Fowls cluck and flutter in and out among the trees. A colony cats of is settled in the house, where they occupy the choicest places, and by preference nuree their kittens in your bed, giving it an undesirable warmth and odour. Dogs run in and out, a white hound being a general favourite, allowed to sit at your feet at meals, and munch up all your bones and scraps — a privilige which mak^s the portion of our village dogs This wellfed creature neither howls nor snaps, as is the way with Oriental dogs. No one knows the breed. The favourite creature of the garden is a crane — a settler on the spot by choice. The bird is wild, but comes into the upper garden to be fed. It never ventures down below among the tangled trees, nor will it stay in the upper garden after sundown. As the light goes out over Santa Croce, away fiies the crane to the nearest hill, where, on the bare and open ground, she -feels secure against her foes — the^fox and snake. Foxes prowl about the village, snapping up any stray bird or kid. Sleeping with one eye open, on a stone that sweeps the horizon, our crane is safe from such attack. Here, in our little garden, bounded by a wall, she might be " cornered " and devoured. At daybreak she returns to the vicinity of man, who, though his will be good, sleeping with both eyes shut, cannot give her the protection she may need at night, without depriving her of that liberty she values like her life. The ridge which gives her safety yields no water ; for that necessary element she returns to man. I saw her come this morning with a cry and flutter down the slope as though she were pur sued, her red eyea glaring and her feathers all astir. The tray was ready for her beak, and in a moment she was bathed ana sparkling with the draught.