CYPRUS.

Bruce Herald, Volume XI, Issue 1062, 28 January 1879, Page 7

CYPRUS.

Bx W. Hepwoeth Dixon. J

Dali, Oct. 1878. ! Pali, at and above which the tents of Her Majesty's 42nd Regiment of Foot are now pitched, is a small hill village j on the northern slope of Santa Croce. j Close behind it rises Mount Cavali ; to the | right stands one of the many St Georges I of this island. Above us hangs the hill j station of Mathiates, where some English tents are hidden in tbe shade of carobs and oleanders ,* and immediately behind us heaves the mountain mass, called in the | olden days the Lesser Olympus. Here, in the stretch of waste, with Cypriote graves below and English tents above stood in the classical ages the romantic city of Idalion. The city was the home j of Aphrodite, the divinely beautiful goddess of the Greeks ; just as Paphos, at tbe western end of Cyprus, was the Ashtorak, i tbe Pbceoican Queen of Heaven. Across this landscape flows the rivulet Idalia a little mountain stream, made famous by the story of Adonis. Shakespeare would have liked to see this place. Here rose the temple of Venus, and about the temple grew one of those groves to which her worshippers came far and near; groves of walnut trees, lemon trees, \ orange trees vines and figs, with | nectarines, oleanders, and -pomegranates j scattered up and down, filling the air with perfume and feeding the eye with colour. Hither, according to the poets, Venus conveyed the young Ascanius, In the bunting grounds above the river banks, once tenanted by the *vild boar, Adonis met his death, an incident which has been the fortune ofa line of poets from the earliest time. The scene is not unfitted for poetic treatment, for the village nestles in a group of hills which hold it in their arms, shading it from the sun and sheltering it from the wind. Green patches dot the landscape; here, as everywhere in Cyprus, a patch of green suggests the presence of a spring, a fountain, or a rivulet. The trees are all poetic in their names and their associations; laurels, limes, pomegranates, olives, vines, and nectarines. The water though not copious, trickles down the hills and flows into the Idalia. A little art and science, sucb as the Greeks in ancient times and the Moors in modern times employed in gardening and agriculture, might extend and multiply the verdant spots now visible. From any of the knolls above our head, the island in its main features is visible. The shore lines are, of course, denied to us, excepting to the right, where the flashing foam and deep ultramarine extend be- , yond the line of sight. Behind us rolls | the sea, with Larnaca and Limasol on our j flanks to right and to left. Egypt, with Cairo and the Pyramids, are in our rear. On our left hand runs the mountain ridge towards Cape Arnauti, a system bos&ed and rounded by the three great mamelons of Troodos, Adelphe, and Santa Croce, which, on a similar scale, may be re garded as the Mount Rosa and Mount Blanc chain of the Cyprian rang?. From j any of the neighbouring nameless heights we look on Cyprus, raking it to right and left, from the Bay of Mophou to the Bay of Salamis, just as either from Scopas or from Mar Elias one may take in the whole Kingdom of Judaea. Below us in our front extends a vast alluvial plain, watered by many streams, and crowned, near the dividing line, by the towers and minarets of Nicosia, the chief city of this island under Turkish rule. Open as a prairie bottom, fertile as the delta of the Danube or the Nile, this plain extends without a break from the Gulf of Morphou, on tbe west, to the Bay of Famagousta on tbe the east, a length of nearly sixty English miles. Along this valley lie all the inland towns from Morphou, on the bay which bears that name, to Nicosia, the capital of the island,and from Nicosia,thenatural halfway house to Famagousta. The place below us, near the ridge, is Athemo, once a town of dignity and importance, now become the lodging of the Cypriote muleteers. Yon heap, a little to the right, standing among the ruins, is Vatali. Farther to the north, nnder the shadow of St. Ambronico is the town of Kythria, which lends its name to the long mountain ridge above. West of the capital stand the towns of Morphou and Lefca ; Morphou, dry and tawny, rising from a soda plain *whicb sends me back in memory to Bitter Creek Lefca, vinous and fertile, where the liquor most loved of gods and men still grows in great abundance. The plain was once a sea bed over which the currents raced and rolled in ancient days, make the two mountain systems of Troodos and Kythria into seperate islets. This plain, a cammon track from east to west, is broken in the centre by a spur of upland country, stretching from the hamlet of St Theodore to the Deftera, which spur divides the drainage of the slope of Mount Olympus into two great masses ; those which flow by way of Lefca and Morphou into the western gulf, and those which find a passage by the Idalia and the Pedias to the sea. The Pedias never dries, and there is usually enough Vwater for a nymph to bathe in. None of the Cyprian: steams are deep enough for boats. Canals might easily be made, but for the present hour the only lines of traffic are tbe camel tracks.

Beyond this valley rise the northern hills, a long, continuous, and unbroken ridge, having a loose resemblance to the coast .range of California j with the same heights near to the contours, a somewhat similar growth of dwarf oak, pines, and cedar. Rising a thousand feet, with mamelbns and sierras reaching two thousand, and even three thousand feet of elevation/ thia range shuts out the sea, the coait-iine of Adaha, arid the mountain masses of Karaminia. A' baby Mount Olympus crowns the ridge, and bears the name of.Lovey The top, on which Cupid is supposed to lit enthroned, is higher

than Ben Lomond, and about the same height hs Vesuvius. The mountain, green and fertile at its base, is wooded to its crest. St. Elias lies below that peak, a noteworthy rival of the mountain consecrated to the god of Love. A third Olympus, near the termination of tbe ridge, is lower stili, an easily invaded threshold of tbe ancient gods. The ridge is fruitful everywhere, with springs and becks in . every rent and dip^of hilt.; Pleasant and Oriental are the views of slope and dale, yet with some touches of the northern nature in them, for the palm trees in this landscape seem everywhere- "nodding to the pine." Pome" granates, citrons, oranges, grow in every garden; olives, mulberries, carobs, grow: in every garden, yet the pines peep out on every side, dominating the landscape; and refreshing tbe atmosphere. Some parts of the great chain of mountain on our left, the spur and inclines of Troados and Adelphe, send you in fancy to the shores of Lake Lucerne. Close your eyes in Inatinct, shade away the palm trees, and you might imagine you were looking from Wiggis or Vaanau towards the heights of San Jost and the Burgenstock. Drop your eye into the lower ground, and here are citrons, oranges, pomegranates, and all the luxuries of a semi-tropical clime. In and out among these pine woods, with the rivulets dripping over every ledge of rock, there must be health resorts in plenty, suitable to every type of constitution and every ill the flesh is heir to. The freshness and coolness to be found in Lebanon and Antilebanon exist in these Olympian chains, where you have every range of temperature from that of Cairo to that of the Righi Kulm. Over that northern ridge which separates us from the sea and from Adana the slopes fall rapidly to the shore, andrivers have there now room to form. Springs here and there drop down the scarp, ail ong the narrow plain, lying at tbe mountain base ; water is plentiful and the landscape green ; a striking contrast to the bare and tawny aspect of the hills between Cape Blanco and Capo Grego. On this long stretch of mountain coast of Cyprus, running from Cape Andreas to the Gulf of Morphou, there is no harbour properly so called, nothing but one little port, that of Kyrenia, a tiny refuge for the small class of craft that plies between the mountain and the markets of Asia Minor. The want of harbours is in truth the chief defect of Cyprus. In the days when praams and triremes were the boats in use Cyprus had a dozen harbours big enough for every purpose. Salamis, Citium, Curium, Neopaphos, were avail able for either warlike or commercial fleets. A vessel tbat could ride full sail between the legs of the Rhodan Colossus could enter any place in Cyprus. Even in the middle ages, when the biggest was a Venetian galley, Limasol and Famagousta were capacious harbours. But English ironclads are different things. The Minotuai*, dispacing ten thousand tons of water, requires much space. We must be satisfied to let such mons'ers ride out in the open roadsteads, and construct our ports and landing stages for a lighter and busier class of ships. Santa Croce, the mountain rising at our back, is one of three peaks whick in this island bear the name of Mount Olympus. Cyprus must be loved of all the gods. Jupiter had three seats in the island : one at Troodos on our left, a little in the rear ; a sesond close behind us on the hill, which the Christians afterwards called Santa Croce (in English the Holy Cross) ; a third and lower one near St Andreap, on the horn of land looking over to the Syrian coast. Three Mounts Olympus in a single isle * three courts of heaven known by the greater gods in a space not quite so large as Sicily ! Cyprus wad ascribed to Aphrodite, not to Zeus, and the worship of that goddess, though her ohief temple stood at Paphoß, and her second temple at Indalium, was established in every port and town. East, weßt, north, and south, Venus was the presiding deity , yet Apollo was scarcely less a personage on this island than either Zeus or Aphro- i dite. Temples were built to him on ! almost every headland, and on every dangerous cape and reef, just as St. George, his Christian heir, has his chapels and cloisters on almost every promontory in the land. St. George is every where in Cyprus, chiefly on the sea and rugged mountains visible from the sea — landmarks and asylums to the swarthy men who pass their lives in sailing on the deep. To-day it is St. George.; in other days it was the God of Light. To the three courts of heaven were subjected more or lesß the nine courts of earthly kings. In early days both gods and men were satisfied with empire on a moderate scale. Jupiter's domain was, perhapp, as big as Yorkshire, and the lesser gods were happy.in estates as vast as Middlesex. The kings who govern under their superior powers were satisfied with less. Tbe kings of Salamis and Citium had no more subjects than the legendary kings of Brentford. Cinyras, king of Paphos, being high priest of Aphrodite, was a sort of ancient king of Y"vet6t. Master of a bottle— master of a lady's waist, he might have sung (had "Waller been his poet laureate) — "■ Give me the zone this ribbon bound." These kings are gone— gone with their courts and palaces --their navies and their public works all stink into the earth, so that we look down from pur hillside" across a burnt and desolate plain, how waiting, as it were, for the reviving; touch that is to awaken the island to a newer and a busier life. To he continued. , V ,