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Selected and rare materials, excerpts and observations from ancient, medieval and contemporary authors, travelers and researchers about Cyprus.
 
 
 
 
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CLAUDE DELAVAL COBHAM
Exerpta Cypria
page 415

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recently uncovered, about three feet in diameter. 1 am surprised that some art-amateur has not laid bare the rest, for the layer of earth upon it is but a few inches thick. The priest told me that there had once been a palace of Aphrodite here. I left Conelia about half past four, and travelling in a X.W. direction crossed a river by a graceful bridge of a single arch : on it is a Turkish inscription. At five I crossed another river, aud the villages of Dóni, Aseheta and Coloni> each a short distance from the other. At last àt a quarter to seven we reached Yeroscltipos, a Greek word meaning " sacred garden," the name which the place has borne from the most remote ages. It is pointed out us the site of the sacred garden of Venns, when the goddess dwelt at Pnphos. On the wide rocky platform which overhangs the sacred garden there is a small village towards the N.W. called also Yeroachipos, inhabited by Turks and a few Greeks. I lodged iu the house of one of the latter called Andrca-Ziinbohici, an agent of the English Consulate, whose flag was flying above the roof. A gentlemanly and conrteons person, he had adopted entirely the costume and manners of an Englishman. His eldest daughter was a worthy habitant of the "sacred garden of Aphrodite," she is the most perfectly beautiful person I have seen in Cyprus. Her face, though not very white, is really a model of grace and loveliness ; yet I found in her the defect characteristic of all the Cypriot women, that is to say, an air of reserve aud silliness, and a bosom all unlike to that of the fair Europa, described by Metastasio in the line Quel bianco petto, rilevato e mobile... her figure, in short, like that of the rest, was too loose; perhaps the native costume does not give it sufficient support. I noticed her golden hair, and remembered that in Africa the women use a dye of this tint. I asked her father to tell me frankly if his daughter nsed the same. He admitted that she did, and told his wife to show me a dish whicli contained a kind of powder, brought from Alexandria, nsed by all Cypriot women for this purpose. So it is to Africa that they are indebted for this part of their beanty. Since we are in the isle of the Graces, no one will, I think, take it amiss that I speak of the fair sex whenever I have an opportunity. Zimbolaci's daughter was married unfortunately to the captain of a merchant vessel, whose appearances (it is true that they were very rare) always ensured to his wife a volley of blows. The unhappy woman, who was abont twenty years old, passed a life of loneliness and widowhood. I noticed in the house a Mnsahnan maidservant, extremely fair, and though pretty, with a certain rustic air which made her exactly like a girl of the .Swiss mountains. Of course it is not among the Moslem that we must seek the remains or the type of the old Cypriot beanty. Musalman women are beautiful, no doubt, but one remembers that the Turks, themselves of Tartar .origin, have mingled their blood with that of the Georgian, Circassian and Mingrelian inmates of their harems. It is among the Greeks that we ought to seek the type of the Venus de' Jlediei ; but how find it when they never allow themselves to be seen ? Possibly the little charm there is about other Greek women enhances that of tlie Cypriote. Perhaps the coquettish and dissolute manners then prevailing in the island turned the heads of painters, sculptors and poets as much as beauty would have done. I confess that, putting aside the conventual style whicli I notice about all modern Greek women, the result perhaps of the depression and stupor of their political position, their round and expressionless faces, their loose bosoms, and their awkward gait do not give one a favourable idea of the much vaunted beauty of their ancestors; and I am judging by women considered good-looking iu their own country, and who really were so in my eyes. The next day, Friday, April 23,1 paid my visit to the sacred garden of Venus. It is a plain, a mile broad and stretching abont two miles along the seashore, to which it falls in a ALI BEY. 4(1.3

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