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CLAUDE DELAVAL COBHAM
Exerpta Cypria
page 414

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It was formerly a veiy rich town, with large sugar-works. One sees still the ruins of an aqueduct, immense stores or vaulted halls, and several Greek churches with fresco-paintings. To-day it is a village of little importance, inhabited by Türke and Greeks, each in their own quarter. The women appeared to me to enjoy considerable liberty, but I saw no beauties— perhaps iny unlucky star kept them out of my sight. Beyond Episcopi the mad ascends hills of pnre limestone rising sometimes perpendicularly from the seashore, and what makes it still more dangerous is that the track is a mere inclined slope of smooth bare rock on which horses scarcely find a foothold. After this perilous climb the road continues over the hills, through woods of cypress, oak, lentisc, amid aromatic herbs, which embalm the air. S. Thomas is η very small village in the mountains. Lalamdio, a little larger, is similarly situated in the middle as it were of this range. From Lataniskio you see perfectly well C. ile Gratta, the point looks about seven leagues off, to the O.E. The greater part of the inhabitants of Laiamshio are Turks, honest, hardworking people, neatly dressed, and chiefly in white. All grow beards, which are long, thick and generally reddish. Their meals are served after a cleanly decent fashion. They would be happy if they were not worried by the government which treats them worse than it does the Greeks. The very poorest of them pays a hundred piastres a year. These good mountaineers inspired me with regret and pity: they are faithfnl Musalmau-s and worthy therefore of a better lot. Next morning, April 24,1 left Lataniskio at half past eight. I went down a deep ravine, at the bottom of which is a fine spring. This, like several others which I have seen in the island, is ornamented with a small fountain of ancient date. The ravine has a perpendicular fall of two hundred and forty feet, on its face are exposed an infinite number of layers of limestone or coarse marble. The parts which are less steep are covered with trees. At a quarter past nine I passed Yaleclora, now a poor village, but once larger and rich, to judge by the ruins still conspicuous of churches aud other buildings. It is built on a slope, surrounded with magnificent valleys, many of them cultivated. At a quarter to twelve I had left this range of hills, and crossed a stream close to its month : the const at this spot trends from E.S.E. to W.N.W. My course was nearly ΝΛΥ. nntil I reached Couclia, an ancient palace on a high hill, half a league from the sea, and quite close to a village of the same name, now little but a collection of rains, giving shelter to some ten families. The palace is built of stone, and composed of a vast courtyard with stables aud stores. The rooms are on an upper floor; but the whole structure is falling into ruin. Some authors take Couclia to be the ancient Cythera, others the ancient Arsinoe. The natives look upon it as the garden, or favourite abode of Queen Aphrodite (a Greek name for Venus). The palace commands a view of a wide and fertile plain, well watered by streams and some rivers. It is now an appanage of one of the Sultanas, but let and sub-let to persons who neglect the fields and let the trees die : this district which might really be an abode of bliss, supplying food to thousands, will gradually become a desert. The manager or principal tenant of Concila was a Greek Christian, who lived in the palace. He was absent just then, so I postponed my visit to, and examination of, the few antiquities existing near the place until my return from Paphos. From Concila you see the sea half a league away to the Β.8.Ή"., and a Turkish village called Mandria a mile away, pretty much in the same direction. Just as I was leaving, a Greek priest guided ine to a spot in the middle of the hill, some few fathoms from the door of the castle, and showed me two pieces of beantifnl mosaic, 404 EXCERPTA CYPRIA.

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