HISTORY ETHNOGRAPHY NATURE WINE-MAKING SITE MAP
Selected and rare materials, excerpts and observations from ancient, medieval and contemporary authors, travelers and researchers about Cyprus.
 
 
 
 
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SIR SAMUEL WHITE BAKER
CYPRUS AS I SAW IT IN 1879
page 72

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that may exist for wheeled conveyances, and you suddenly arrive at a deep ditch and high bank, which block the thoroughfare. Georgi had assured I us that no difficulty would delay us between Dali and the high road from Larnaca to Lefkosia, which we should intersect about half-way between the two termini. Instead of this, after travelling for a couple x>f miles along a good hardened track, we arrived at Ά series of trenches which effectually stopped all progress. Each van had a pickaxe and shovel, therefore we all set to work in rapid relief of each other to level the obstructions, and by this hard exercise the thermometer appeared to rise quickly from the low temperature of the morning. The t)xen were good, and by dint of our united exertions in heaving the wheels and pushing behind, we dragged Ihe vans through the soft ground that had filled the "ditches, and then slowly travelled across ploughed fields and alternate plains of a hard surface covered with abominable thistles. W e passed on our left a large farm that exhibited a wonderful contrast to the general barrenness of the country. The fields were green with young wheat and barley, and numerous sakyeeahs or cattle-wheels for raising water supplied the means of unfailing irrigation. I believe this property belonged to Mr. Mattei, and there could be no stronger example of the power that should be developed throughout this island to render it independent of precarious seasons. It is a simple question of a first outlay that is absolutely necessary to ensure the crops. Throughout the barren plain of Messaria water exists in unfailing quantity within a few yards of the parched surface— thus at the same time that the crops are perishing

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