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LARNACA 39 told me lie was an Arab from Syria, but that he knew Cyprus thoroughly from end to end. I told him I wished to go to the house of the Chief Secretary, and was charmed when he answered promptly, 'Right, sir ; I know the gentleman.' After heavily mounting and falling for some time on the swell we arrived at last at a short wooden jetty, with a small steam crane pertly peering over its side, and a square building facing it like a new village school in England. The British flag flying over this last told me that it was the custom house. Experience presently told me the same thing, for all my luggage was instantly carried off to it and deposited in a verandah, before a door which proved to be locked. The officials, it seemed, were all of them away at breakfast, and my Arab protector suggested that I should follow their example. ' If you like,' he said, ' I take you to the hotel. While you eat I go order the carriage—good carriage, sir ; three horses—and I arrange with these fellows for the price of him. Come, sir, come this way.' I assented and went with him. In something like thirty seconds I had passed out of sight of the steam crane and the custom house into a world whose suggestions were utterly strange and different. I was moving rapidly along an ill-paved species of esplanade between the sea and a succession of houses perforated with pointed arches. Some of these seemed to my hasty glance in passing to give access to no-thing but caves of darkness ; others revealed glimpses

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