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of them is about two miles. The walls of the antient city, which were built with semicircular towers, may he traced all round, and they seem not to have been much less than four miles in compass. There are still remaining in the city several very magnificent homes, which are of the times of the kings of Cyprus; some of them have been repaired by the Venetians, according to the rules of modern architecture ; and there is a most beautiful Corinthian door-case of a house which, they say, belonged to the Venetian general. The cathedral church, now a mosque, is a large building, and exceeds that of Famagusta in the front, as much as it falls short of it in other respects; there was also a church here dedicated to the holy cross, and another of the Augnstinians, which are now mosques. The Greeks have several new built churches in the city, and the Latin fathers of the convent of the holy sepulchre at Jerusalem have a small convent. Though there are very few Armenians, yet they hare possession of an antient church here. There is a great manufacture of cotton stuffs, particularly of very fine dimities, and also half sattins of a very coarse sort : they have here the best water in Cyprus, brought by an aqueduct from the mountains. Two leagues to the north east of Nicosia, on the side of the mountains, is the rich convent of ChrysmUm, to which we went on the twenty third ; it belongs to the Greek convent of the holy sepulchre at Jerusalem. Over it, towards the top of thé mountain, there is a place called the hundred and one chambers, which consists of several buildings, one over another; the highest is very difficult of access; they have a tradition that a queen of Cyprus, who had the leprosy, chose to live here for the benefit of the air, and that saint John Chrysostoin advising her to build the convent below, she followed his counsel, and was eured of her leprosy; others add that she bathed in a water there, which is still resorted to by persons in that distemper, who find benefit by it. This monastery has been a very large building, though great part of it is ruined ; there are two churches, one of which, called .Saint Helena, is ruinous, the other is covered with a dome, and painted all over within ; it is dedicated to Saint John Chrysostom. Before it is a handsome portico, from which there are three doors with line marble door-cases, that do not seem to be very antient; two scepters were formerly deposited behind the folding doors, the figures of which are painted on the wall, and at the bottom there is a plaee where the crown was kept. All the account they can give is, that they belonged to some queen, and that they were taken away by a pasha of Cyprus. It is possible that the regalia of Cyprus were kept here. This convent is near the road which leads tu Geritine. We crossed the hills again to the north, and lay at a village called Chilla. On the twenty fourth we went to a most magnificent uninhabited convent, which is almost entire, called Telabnise it consists of a very beautiful cloister; on one side of it there is a magnificent refectory, on the other a fine room np one flight of stairs, which might lie a librar}', and under it there are two very handsome apartments, one of which might be a common refectory, and the other probably served to receive strangers; on a third side, is a church of a more antient and heavy building; all the rest is of a very fine Gothic architecture, and in the cloister they have made a cistern of a beautiful coffin of white marble adorned with bulls heads, cupids, aud festoons of exquisite workmanship. We went about three miles to a mined port called Oerines, which is the antient Cerynia; the ruined walls are about half a mile in circumference, and seem to lie on the foundation of the antient walls, for I observed on the west side, a large fossee cut ont of the rock, and the old town might extend further east beyond the present square fort, which is about a quarter of a mile in eirenmference. Though this place is esteemed to lie very strong, yet the Venetian governor, when the Turks were marching towards it, (after they had taken Nicosia) shame- 260 EXCERPTA CYPIUA.

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