HISTORY ETHNOGRAPHY NATURE WINE-MAKING SITE MAP
Selected and rare materials, excerpts and observations from ancient, medieval and contemporary authors, travelers and researchers about Cyprus.
 
 
 
 
uses Google technology and indexes only and selectively internet - libraries having books with free public access
 
  Previous Next  

MALLOCK W.
In an enchanted island
page 59

View PDF version of this page

below were in most places as perfect as wlien—so Colonel Falkland told me—they were built by the Eepublic of Venice four hundred years ago. Here and there, however, the stone-work had been torn away, and left a practicable descent over the earth and rubble underneath. Down one of these places Colonel Falkland and I scrambled, and he began to lead me out over a bare tract of plough-land. Pre-sently we paused, and looked back at the town. What I saw was a girdle of walls fast growing dim in the evening—walls which at intervals bulged into rounded bastions. Above them peered the eaves of some flat-roofed houses, with some palm trees and one minaret, dark in the clear air. At that short distance nothing more was visible. Pursuing our walk we arrived in a quarter of an hour at a barren space of ground, littered with fallen building stones, columns and capitals, and fragments of carved arches. A cross which caught my atten-tion showed me that the relics were Christian, and a second glance showed me that the building they belonged to had been Gothic. ' Here,' said Colonel Falkland, ' is the site of a palace of the Lusignan kings. In mediaival times this spot was inside the city. Its walls then had three times their present circuit ; but the Venetians destroyed them at. the time of the Turkish invasion as being too extensive to defend, and instead of them built the present ones. Do you see,' he continued, ' what this place is now ? It is a burying ground—the Armenian burying 56 IN AN ENCHANTED ISLAND

View PDF version of this page


  Previous First Next