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TEE UNFOUND TREASURE 95 is always lying in wait for one. Obscure Turkish villages stand upon broken palaces ; and passing guests in rude reed-thatched hovels have discovered that the roofs rested on columns of verd antique. On lonely mountain roads detached masses of rock are found cut into towers, with sepulchral chambers on the summit; and by the road-side in one gorge is a great Eoman sarcophagus, with a winged lion in marble, keeping guard over the lid. As to details and places, I confess I was somewhat hazy ; but I knew enough to excite my antiquarian sympathies ; and I felt a longing to charter a Greek caïque, to cross the intervening sea, and plunge into the regions of the marvellous. But a glance at my watch warned me that time was pressing ; and, instead of thinking of verd antique in Asia, I remembered that at the moment my object was to find it in Cyprus. Mr. Adam and I, there-fore, now began to scramble in various directions over the uneven ground, making from one point and another a number of geological surveys. But we could see nowhere any of the signs we were in search of, and the muleteer was completely at fault as to the spring. At last, however, as I was straying along a steep track, I saw at my feet a small green fragment, of the very same kind as that which my friend had given me. I went on, and presently found another. Then the track turned sharp round an angle of rock, and once more the extraordinary charm of the view quite distracted my

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