On

spares no expense or pains in attempting its record. the occasion of my visit he spoke to me very sadly of the vandalism which the authorities threaten to commit by the throwing down of the seaward wall, curtain-wall I think it is called, of the ancient, fortified city of Famagusta, in order, principally, that the stone and area may be made use of for the purposes of the railway, which it is proposed to construct between Famagusta and Nicosia. Of this suggested, but as yet happily unaccomplished crime, I shall have something to say on a later page.

CHAPTER VI

COLOSSI

ON the day following that of our arrival in Cyprus the Flora reappeared from Famagusta and about noon we went on board of her to proceed to Limasol, some forty or fifty miles away, where we were engaged to stay a week or ten days. The traveller indeed is lucky when he can find a chance of making this journey in the course of an afternoon by boat, instead of spending from ten to fifteen hours to cover it in a carriage. Although Cyprus in its total area is not much, if any, larger than the two counties of Norfolk and Suffolk, locomotion is still difficult owing to the impassable nature of the ways and the steepness and frequency of the mountains. When I visited it fourteen or fifteen years ago there were no roads to speak of in the island, except one of a very indifferent character between Larnaca and Nicosia. The Turks, its former masters, never seem to make a road; they only destroy any that may exist. Now in this respect matters are much improved. The English Government, out of the pitiful sums left at its command after the extraction from the colony of every possible farthing towards the payment of the Turkish tribute, has by slow degrees constructed excellent roads between all the principal towns, with bridges over the beds of the mountain torrents. But as yet in the country districts nothing of the sort has been attempted.

With us were embarked a number of lambs, little

things not more than a week or two old, bought, I suppose, for the provisioning of the ship. At this season of the year everybody in Cyprus lives upon lamb. It was melancholy to see the tiny creatures, their legs tied together, heaped one upon another in the bottoms of large baskets, whence, bleating piteously for their mothers, they were handed up and thrown upon the deck. A more satisfactory sight to my mind were one or two cane creels half filled with beautiful brown-plumaged woodcock, shot or snared by native sportsmen upon the mountain slopes.

On board the steamer, a fellow-passenger to Limasol, whither he was travelling to negotiate for the land upon which to establish a botanical garden, was Mr. Gennadius, the Director of Agriculture for the island. He told me what I had already observed at Larnaca-that the orange and citron trees in Cyprus, which on the occasion of my former visit were beautiful to behold, are to-day in danger of absolute destruction, owing to the ravages of a horrible black scale which fouls and disfigures fruit and leaves alike. (Avnidia coccinea or Avnidia orantii.)

For the last dozen years or so this blight has been increasingly prevalent, the mandarin variety of fruit alone showing any power of resisting its attacks. The proper way to treat the pest is by a number of sprayings with a mixture of from twenty to twenty-five per cent. of soft soap to eighty or seventy-five per cent. of warm water. A dressing thus prepared destroys the scale by effecting a chemical union of the alkali of the soap with the fatty matter in the organism of the parasite, or failing this stifles it by glazing it over and excluding the air necessary to its existence. Mr. Gennadius believes that if this treatment could be universally adopted, scale would disappear from Cyprus within a few years.

But here comes the difficulty. For three centuries

the Cypriote has been accustomed to Turkish rule with its great pervading principle of Kismet. If it pleases Allah to destroy the orange-trees (in the case of the Christian peasant, read God) so let it be, he so let it be, he says, and shrugs his shoulders. Who am I that I should interfere with the will of Heaven by syringing? Which being translated into Anglo-Saxon means, "I can't be bothered to take the trouble." If the Director of Agriculture in person or by proxy would appear three or four times a year in the sufferer's garden with the wash ready made and a squirt and proceed to apply it, the said sufferer would look on and smoke, making no objection. Beyond this he will rarely go.

Therefore unless the blight tires of attack it begins to look as though the orange is doomed in Cyprus. This is a pity, as that fruit does very well there, and the mildew which threatened it at one time was taken at its commencement and conquered by means of powdered sulphur puffed about the trees with bellows, Government distributing the sulphur at cost price.

Here

About three hours after leaving Larnaca the vessel passes a sloping sward clothed with young corn and carob-trees that, backed by lofty peaks of the Trooidos range, runs from a hill-top to the lip of the ocean. once stood Amathus, a great city of immemorial antiquity which flourished down to Roman times if not later, and ultimately, it is said, was destroyed by an earthquake. Now all that is left of it are acres of tumbled stone and a broken fragment of fortress, whether ancient or medieval I cannot say, against the walls of which the sea washes. It is told that here, or at some later town built upon the same site, Richard Cœur-deLion landed when he took Cyprus from the Emperor Isaac Comnenus.

Wonderful indeed is it for us, the children of this

passing hour, to look at that grey time-worn coast and as we glide by to reflect upon the ships and men that it has seen, who from century to century came up out of the deep sea to shape its fortunes for a while. Who were the first? No one knows, but very early the fleets of Egypt were here. Then followed the Phoenicians, those English of the ancient world as they have been called, who like eagles to the carcass, gathered themselves wherever were mines to be worked or moneys to be made. They have left many tombs behind them and in the tombs works of art, some of them excellent enough. Thus before me as I write stands a bronze bull made by Phoenician hands from Cyprian copper, a well-modelled animal full of spirit, with a tail that wags pleasingly upon a balled joint.

After the Phoenicians, or with them perhaps, were Greeks of the Mycenian period. Their tombs also celebrate a glory that is departed, as the British Museum can bear witness. Next to the Greek the Persian; then the satraps of Alexander the Great; then the Ptolemies; then galleys that bore the Roman ensign which flew for many generations; then the Byzantine emperors-these for seven centuries.

After this a new flag appears, the lions of England flaunting from the ships of war of Richard the First. He took the place and sold it to Guy de Lusignan, King of Jerusalem so called, whose descendants ruled here for three centuries, till at length the island passed into the hands of the Venetians. These only held it eighty years, and after them came the most terrible fleet the Cyprian Sea has seen, that which flew the Crescent. For three centuries Cyprus groaned and withered under the dreadful rule of the Turk, till at last a few gentlemen arrived in a mail-steamer and for the second time in the history of the island ran up the flag of Britain. How long will it float there, I wonder?