CYPRUS.

Bruce Herald, Volume XI, Issue 108, 31 January 1879, Page 7

CYPRUS.

By W. Hepwobth Dixon

Kino Richard's Camp, Oct. 1878

*v\Te were standing On a low bluff between the Monastery of Catto and the village of Metokki, looking towards the capital. On this bluff Sir Garnet is building the new Government house. Around that house will grow the new English town ; first barracks, officers' quarter?, hospitals and magazines ; afterwards, no doub*, will spring up taverns, scboo s, churches, theatres, the beginnings of an English city of a hiuber class. The Pedias flows below the bluff ; sometimes — as at present — dry, but usually a flowing water, and occasionally a foaming torrent* The scenery around is splendid ' on our left hand rol s the great mountain chain of Kythrsea ; on our right the still lofiier chain of Troodos ponderously picturesque in foim a: d colour ar * these mountain ranges. Iv our front ies Nicosia, , bastioued aud wa ; led with old Yewtian masonry. From ab >ye the lines spring forests of minarets, towers and trees. The trees gleam with oranges and pomegranates, willows, and poplars, mixed with pdms and carobs. The town looks almost green; a small and bastard rival of Damascus. " What do you think of Cyprus?" asked Sir Garnet. |_I do not look on it for the first time," I answered, " but I find no reason to change the gocd opinion I always held of it. Once it was -he garden of the. world, and under English culture it may be so again." " I quite agree with you," Sir Garnet said " This bluff at present looks no better than a bit of sun-dried -waste. I shall lay it out in gardens, plant it with trees, and cover in my house with shade. You see the well I am digging down there ? as soon as I reach water half my work will be accomplished.

Cyprus has come to us as a great surprise. Our people have not sighed for such a gift. Our neighbours may have dreamt of such additions to their list of caies, but even so lately as a year ago, not one English pillow, as I take it, had been troubled by such dreams. French, German, Greek, Italian, Russ, had all seemed nearer than ourselves. The French had long been spying out the land with views of future settlement in their minds. The Germans, looking with scientific eyes, had climbed up every height, and crept through every gorge, noting with slow and accurate pencil all the physical features of the scene. The Greeks, a water peeple. Coming in their barks and carracks, had monopolised the trade, and were beginning to monopolise the agriculture. The Italians had been here to good account : some settling in the land as merchants and money dealers; o'hers as explorers of the soil, and the discoverers of remains of ancient art The Russ have come and gone, anu come again, in secret and in some disguise, working as u-u-d through their " pious pilgrims," marking the ground for garrisons of monks by way of opening up a road for garrisons of troops. The English made no move. England seemed fat* away ; beyond the watei s and beyond the Alps. Out* presence in the land of Aphro dfce was imteU A line of French steamers tombed at Larnac;*,andp, second line of Austrian steamers touched at Larnaca. Cyprus depended on these vessels for her communication with Egypt-, Syria, and the Dardanelles. None of the great English companies which have covered all the ocea.lß wid. their fleets. have dreamt of bringing Cyprus within the sphere of their maritime enterprise. Our merchant ships though crowding the ports of Corfu and Crete, Bryrout and Seandroon, were seidom seen in any port of Cyprus. Neither have our scholars or travellers paid much attention to the inland. Io connection with St. Paul, a definite interest clings to Salamis and Paphop, and the critics of that great apostle have to mention these in connection with his teaching. But the interest thus excited was not deep. Excepting Pocock, no man of the foremost class had traversed and discovered the island for our countrymen. Other nations sent out consuls of their race and tongue to represent them, but till lately we were satisfied to have the majesty of England represented at La Scala by a Levantine. Our consulate was supposed to be a sinecure, if not a jest. Men bound for Palestine usually avoided Cyprus, even those who had rushed on shore at Scio and at Rhodes crept under the awnings of their boat at Larnaca, and waited patiently in the offing till the purser had arranged bis purchases of herbs and fruit. Not so our rivals for dominion in the East.

Among tbe open secrets of Louis Napoleon, whom we English people used to praise as our gallant and faithful ally, was the fixed idea of seizing Cyprus, as a means of acting on the Syrian coast. A French protectorate of Syria was a legend of his family. Napoleon the First had been at Acre and Jaffa. Egypt was prized by bim ; but chiefly as a path to other coantries — Syria, Persia, India. To make the midland sea a French lake, he wanted Malta, Crete, and Cyprus. Nelson and the Nile dissolved his dream, yet be was always barking back on that illusion of his youth. His nephew was no sooner on the throne than he began to scheme and plot for an extension of his empire in the East. Every branch of tbe public service was excited and employed in carrying on the work. Of course, his plans were veiled. As with the Russian Government, a zeal for science and for history sprang up in unexpected places. The French Admiralty wanted to know about the state of agriculture in- Cyprus, and the condition of tbe cedars bf Lebanon. M. Fourcade had written a treatise °n "The presentstate of C* pru»," which remained unprinted in the Foreign Office. The Minuter of Public Instruction found

that he needed information aa to the reign « f the Lusiegnam dynasty. To illustrate this piece of history he required a map. There was no decent map 6Xtan*. What harm cou : d spring from making a new map ? to write a new history is to enricV letterp. To draw a new map is to enrich science. M. de Mas Latrie was set to work. Documents were collected. In 1850 we had a " Note on the actualstate of Cyprus, and on the means of making a map." Two years liter, we g*t a fitst volume of documents; three years la er still, a second volume pf documents. These works were crowned by the Academy, lii 1801 we got a first volume of the history, and in the following year the map. A note explains that this, map oi Cyprus is intended simply to illustrate the suny of tbe Lusingan dynasty in Cyprus— nothing else. Oddly enough, the curiosity of the French Foreign Oflice was uotalla\ed by the copious notes on the agriculture of Cyprus, aud on the manners of the Lusignans. In 1855 M Albert;, Gaudry printed a report of nearh five hundred page**, with a map, on corn, cotton, sugar-cine, and tobacco, on olive*, dates, v.nes, tomatoes, and on other topics, down to cats and cm els Mdc Mas La lie has printed fifteen hu- dre.d pages of do -u ments and more than five hundred pages of narrative, He has not yet done. The tale^if. those 1 >ng forgotten k,ings is still untoror' M Alexis Dani our, a geutleman of the Foreign Office,wenttoCyprus in com pany of M- Gaudry to look into the rocksprimary rocks, secondary rocks, and tertiary rocks. Something was evidently wrong about the Cyprian rocks. M Gaudry was a man of science, and ur fi r , one sees, to send alone. M. Alexis Damour was not a man of science. So the Minister sent him out. Who knows ? His name wan perhaps his fortune. M. d'Amour was a benefitting agent in the Court of Aphrodite. Anyhow, Messrs Gaudry and Damour went to Cyprus, under orders, at the moment when the feud about the silver keys was heating into flame.

The Anglo-French alliance, and the movement on the Black Sea, rolled away events for some time from the isle of Cyprus and the Syrian coast ; but Louis Napoleon tried his chances alter the French advance from Bey rout on Damascuc, and would probably have seized the island but for the English opposition to his plans. We warned bim off. We whispered him out of Syria, much as the Americans whispered him out of Mexco. I was at Beyrout when the F. etch were leaving for Marseilles, and I remember with what bitterness the retiring army spoke of us. The Turk*?, they said, could never drive them out, nor could the English drive them out. But we could cut them off. Our ships enabled ua to starve them, and we took the full advantage of power. And now the isle has fallen to ourselves ; the isle fo.* which we have ueither worked nor prayed, the iale to which we send no ships.

Apart from the Scriptural interest in St Pau', and the classic interest in Aph«* r« dite, we Euglieh had no othar thau a remote one in the land. True, we had once before be^u here, and we had left a masculine »nri enduring m*-m 'ry of our h j >urn. Wm had coins t> L'manul i<i p- aee, ■■ngaged in duty 'oiheC oss. W< had 'en snamefullv ahu-ed, our vtßß^i^ p : undered, and ou manner!* put todtath Redress bring asked for and refused, we nad ianded, taken L masol by force, destroyed a Cypriote army, crowed the -pu-8 of Mount Olympus, st -rmed the ramparts of Nic>sii, put Dnke Isaac into silver chains, and broken up his army so complete! p that they had never rallied for a second fight. Having won the army by our valour we had given Cyprus to the Knights of Jerusa'em, the master of whom was then an Englishman. As lords of the land we had afterwards be stowed the crown on Guy de Lusigoan, the diecowned KLiog of Jerusalem. Lusignan waa King of Richard'dtnan. All that was long ago, not long for Cyprus, which begins ber history with the dates of Tyre and Sidon, and was waxing smart in business at fche time when Agamemnon sailed for Troy ; but for a county like our own, in which the modern his ory is dated in official records from the Union of the Roses on the fieidof Redland Marsh In spite of the deficient ruling, I am far from thinking that the whole of English history, before the accesion of Henry "VIL, is dead for. us. We are not logical and philosophical like the French. We never cut ourselves away entirely from the past. Not being a logical people, we are content to read the history of our fathers as a matter that concerns ourselves, who are in truth the outcome of their efforts and the prolongation of their lives. Richard of the Lion Heart is notforus a nameand memory like an Egyptian King of the twenty-fifth or twenty ninth dynasy. He is a l.ving. fact, and what he did for us in Cyprus is a livinp fact, that bore and bears its fruit, In Cyprus he found our patron saint. In Cyprus he left for centuries the stamp of English might. On one of these low bluffs be pitched bis t*?nt ; probab'y on the bluff from which I date these lines. On my suggestion, Sir Garnet Wolsely gives to his. new residence the name of King Richard's Camp.

Thus we connect the new occupation of Cyprus witb the old. England is an ancient country, and her sovereigns are connected with each other by unbroken lines. Nearly seven hundred years ago we found this island governed from Constantinople. For good or ill we severed that connection Four hundred years *»lapsed before the ruler of Constantinople became once more the lord of Cyprus. England has again crossed the sea, assumed the foremost part. Queen Victoria's nominal titles, on the island are derived from Sultan Abdul Hamid, but her actual titles, by and under which she took possession, lay in the sovereignties oi her fleet. Force gave

us Cyprus once before, and force will have tokeep iVfdrHis 1 now. The ironclad is King. a (To be contimied.J