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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 313

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viiicli should be hereabouts: the soil is very good, but so much disregarded as to be covered with shrubs and underwood. The village of Agathon, on the skirts of the mountains, is extremely pleasant; but we saw nothing else worth regarding till we came to Zdavlo, where we found a pretty good bay, with a rock on each side, and ruins which may possibly have been Aphrodisium, as this was the first tiling like a port which we met with in the division of Carpass. From this place we mounted a very steep hill in order to visit the castle of Cantora, the buildings and fortifi-cations of which, we were told, remained almost entire. We accordingly dismounted at the foot of the rock on which it stands, and after a very difficult and fatiguing search ascended to a gate, through which we entered; and viewing the whole, found it as much out of repair as any we had seen. The greatest part of the country is extremely pleasant, particularly from Estabomi to Platonissa, where rising ground covered with wood, ajid opening glades, form an agreeable contrast : from the tops of the hills about Lionarissa the plains and gardens delight the eye ; and there is a great deal of rural sweetness in the neighbourhood of Agios Andronicos, even to Galousa* from which directly north about a league, is a large, broad bluff head, with a little rocky island both at the east and west point. In the morning we went to survey it, and passed through many ruins with two churches, about a mile from Galousa : upon the east side of this head we found what they call the harbour, though a little to the north west is another much better : the first has a rising ground on each side ; that on the west of the head has been covered with buildings, one of which, being round, may have been a temple, dedicated to the goddess of love; and the whole I suppose to have been the Acha?orum Littns, but I cannot allow the harbour a west situation, which the old geographers say it had: indeed the old chart-makers seem to be very fond of giving their bays and harbours a western exposition, even when nature has made them easterly; for what reason I know not: but, be that as it may, this is a very bad harbour; and iu my opinion none can be safe which are not sheltered from the west. About half a dozen miles from hence we struck off to the southward to see a ruinous village, where we were told we should find magnificent remains: the place has, I believe, been of note; and by the cutting of the stones which lie scattered up and down, seems to have been well built : two square towers, embattelled with a neat little chapel, are still standing; the portraits of some saints are undefaeed, and two large cisterns not yet mined ; bnt no figures in sculpture or letters are to be seen, in the bay of the Carpasian Promontory the Golgi inhabited, not unlikely where we found a large modern cistern, with old foundations of houses. The modern Carpass is by no means so fine a town as I expected to see : it consists of a parcel of vile scattered houses and gardens ; and I did not see one handsome woman in the place, which hath been always famed for beauties. Here is a new church, built after the mean vulgar form, though the wooden carved work of the choir is better than what 1 have observed in any Greek church, and must have belonged to some other, for it is very old. About two miles eastward are fine ruins of a village, which they call Athendiw, though I can not find it in any map I have seen : however, in many circumstances it answers the description of the ancient Carpasia, built by Pygmalion ; and I have taken the liberty to mark it as snch in my chart. The island is very narrow in this place, from whence we ascended to the top of Mount Olympus, where Venus had another fane, in lien of which we found, just on the summit, the ruins of a little, wretched Greek chapel. From this spot, which is a great deal higher than any other part in the neighbourhood, I took the bearings of the Country to Cape André, or Glides Prom., and Ave found the air intolerably cold, and so moist, that DIÌUMMOXU

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