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.
 
 
 
 
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MALLOCK W.
In an enchanted island
page 71

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a man at tlie bottom of it, kneeling down, and scratching at the earth with a knife. Some one said to me, ' Look, he is coming to some-thing ! ' And, following the movements of the glim-mering steel blade, I saw appear amongst the clay another glimmering surface. It was brown, it was rounded, it had some rude patterns on it ; and presently a small bowl was handed up to the archaeologists. The scratching was resumed, and in a minute or two was a like result ; then another and another ; and before long, in a basket, there was a numerous and growing family of jugs, lamps, and vessels with a spout like tea-pots, most of them oddly diminutive. I asked Mr. Adam what these things were. He knew their character per-fectly. They were, without doubt, Phoenician ; and as for their size, he said, that told its own story. The trench that had just been opened was the grave of a Phoenician child. My doubts of a moment ago were to some extent wrong anyhow. I had never been present at an occasion like this before, and it changed at once the whole character of the afternoon for me. I did not, as I have said, care sixpence about Phoenicia ; but there was some-thing that touched the feelings like a knife or a note of music in seeing after all these centuries the earth giving up her dead, and the toys of a child thrown back to the light which had shone on them last before the dawn of history. I presently left the group, and walked along the f.8 IN AN ENCHANTED ISLAND

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