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I have mentioned before. There are a surprising number of snakes here, but few of them venomous, except a small kind ; a species, which is generally thought to be the asp, supplies the place of the riper, and is said to have the same virtues; it is called kouphi (blind). The largest of them are near two inches thick, and are bigger in proportion than snakes, the head being rather small with regard to their bodies, and it is positively affirmed that they have been known to swallow a hare whole, which, if true, must be understood of π young one ; their bite is exceedingly venomous, but it has been cured by medicines, and by the serpent stone. I have been informed that there is an asp in Italy which is not deaf. It is possible the Psalmist might mean this reptile, when he made mention of the deaf adder, which refuseth to hear the voice of the charmer. They have an exceedingly large broad spider, somewhat resembling a small crab ; the Franks call it the Tarantula, but I believe it is not the same which is found in Apulia. There is here a brown house lizard called a Taranta, and if it walks over any part of the body it causes a very great itching, which continues for some time with much pain, I do not find that they have scorpions, which are so common in Syria ; but the locnste when they come, ravage the country in a most terrible manner, destroy whole fields of corn where they alight, and eat the leaves of the mulberry trees, on which their silk depends. The Cypriotes are the most subtle and artful people in all the Levant, nor have they more veracity than their neighbours, so that their words are not to be depended upon, as they make use of all means that way to deceive. The women are little superior to their a-ncestors with regard to their virtue; and as they go unveiled, so they expose themselves in a manner that in these parts is looked on as very indecent. They go every Whit Sunday in procession to the sea in remembrance of Yenns's coming out of it, which was nntiently attended with some other circumstances. They retain here the barbarous custom of the other Eastern nations of treating their wives as servants; they wait on them at table, and never sit down with them, unless in such families as are civilized by much con versa* ion by the Franks; for baring been under the Greek emperors, and the Venetians, they have coinè very much into the European customs. They make use of chairs and tables, and lie on oblong square tables, probably to be more free from the noxious animals in the summer, and from the damps occasioned by the great rains in the winter. They make use of carriages with two wheels drawn by oxen. The common people here dress much in the same manner as they do in the other islands of the Levant; bnt those who value themselves on being somewhat above the vulgar, dress like the Turks, but wear a red cap turned up with fur, which is the preper Greek dress, and used by those of the islands in whatever part* of the Levant they live. Cyprus on account nf its situation, and the cheapness of all sorts of provisions in the island, is the place where almost all ships touch on their voyages in these parts; and by this way a correspondence is canned on between all the places in the Levant and Christendom. So that furnishing ships with provisions is one of the principal branches of the trade of this island, and they sometimes export corn to Christendom, though it is contrary to their laws. They send their cottons to Holland, England, Venice and Leghorn, aud wood to Italy and France. They have a root of an herb called in Arabic Fuah, in Greek Lizare, and in Latin Rubia Tinctorum, which they send to Scanderoon, and by Aleppo to Diarbeck and Persia, with which they dye red, but it serves only for cottons, for which it is also used here; it is called by the English Madder, but it is doubted whether it is the Madder so well known in Holland; they export a red dye for woollen stuffs, which is falsley called by the English Vennilion, though that is known to be made of Cinnabar; whereas this is the produce of the 2tìH EXCERPTA CYPRIA.

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