beings and one of beasts of burden. There again in the shadow of the colonnade is the provision mart where butlers, eunuchs, and housewives haggle loudly with peasants and fishermen. At yonder shop several young

men of fashion and a white-robed woman or two with painted eyes inspect the marvellous necklace wrought by the noted jeweller named-ah! his name escapes us. He neglected to write it in his tomb whence last year Mr. Christian took this golden collar that the artist would not part with save at a price which none of those gallants or their loves could pay. Hark now to the shouting! Why do those gorgeously attired runners, followed by outriders clad in uncouth mail, push a way through the crowd beating them with their wands of office? The king—the king himself drives down the street to pass along the market towards that temple at its head, where he will make an offering because of the victory of his arms over certain enemies in the mountains. He is a splendid-looking figure, shining with gold and gems, but very sick and weary, for this king loves the rich Cyprian wine.

But such pictures are endless, let us leave them buried every one beneath the dust of ages. Our lamp is out, only the blank dull sheet is there; about us are ruins, sky and sea, with the fungus-pickers, the yellowflowered weeds and the wandering sheep-no more.

What a sight must that have been when great Salamis fell at last, shaken down, hurled into the sea, sunk to the bowels of the earth beneath the awful sudden shock of earthquake. Those mighty columns shattered like rods of glass tell us something of the story, compared to which the burying of Pompeii under its cloak of flaming stone was but a trivial woe. each reader must fashion it for himself. My version might not please him

But

Not far away from the forum or market are baths. One can still see portions of their mosaic floor, polished by the feet of many thousand bathers, and the flues that

warmed the water. Further on is the site of the great reservoir with remains of the aqueduct that filled it. As one may still see to-day its waters must have been distributed along the streets by means of little marble channels at their sides, a poisonous practice that doubtless bred much sickness, since they were open to every contamination. It would be interesting to know what was the death-rate in these old places. I imagine that it would appal us.

The necropolis of Salamis, as Mr. Percy Christian informed me sadly, has never yet been discovered. He showed me, however, where he believed it to be, under certain drifted sand-heaps near the temple of Venus and the seashore, but outside the walls of the city. If so, there it will rest till the British Museum ransacks it, since private persons may dig no longer. Then what treasures will appear! The gathered wealth of forty or fifty generations of the citizens of one of the richest cities of the ancient world, or such portions of it as its owners took with them to their tombs-nothing less.

If only all the multitudes which once inhabited these walls could rise again before our eyes and in their company those of the other dead cities of Cyprus! The great Messaoria plain would be white with the sea of their faces and alive with the flash of their eyes. eyes. There would be no standing-room in Cyprus; the millions of them would overflow its shores and crowd the brow of ocean further than the sight could follow. What has become of them? Where can there be room for them even for their ghosts? I suppose that we shall find out one day, but meanwhile the problem has a certain uncanny fascination. Perhaps the stock is really strictly limited and we are their ghosts. That would account for the great interest I found in Salamis, which most people, especially ladies, think a very dull place, duller even than Famagusta.

Perhaps the most interesting relic of all those at

Salamis is that ruin of the fane of Cypris which is set upon a hill. There is, however, not much to be seen except broken columns of the purest white marble, and here and there the fragments of statues. But the shape

of the temple can still be traced; its situation, overlooking the sea upon a rising mount where grow asphodel, anemones, and other sky-blue flowers of whose name I am ignorant, is beautiful, and the sighs of a million lovers who worshipped Venus at this altar still seem to linger in the soft and fragrant air.

When we reached home again a lady, our fellowguest, described to me the me the ceremony of a Turkish wedding to which she had been invited that afternoon. I will not set down its details second-hand, but the bride, she said, was a poor little child of eleven who had to be lifted up that the company might see her in her nuptial robes and ornaments. The husband, a grown man, is reported to be an idiot. It seems strange that such iniquities, upon which I forbear to comment further, can still happen under the shadow of the British flag.

This reminds me of another Turkish ceremony. On the day that we left Famagusta, at the conclusion of our visit, for Nicosia, we halted a while to breathe our horses in the village of Kouklia, where, by the way, there is a beautiful leaking aqueduct that is covered with maidenhair fern. While I was admiring the ferns and the water that dripped among them, a Turkish funeral advanced out of the village, which at a respectful distance we took the liberty of following to the burial-ground. The corpse, accompanied by a motley crowd of mourners, relatives, sight-seers, and children, was laid uncoffined upon a rough bier that looked like a large mortar-board, and hidden from sight beneath a shroud ornamented with red and green scarves. Upon arrival at the graveyard, an unkempt place, with stones innocent of the mason's hammer marking the head and foot of each grave and serving as stands for pumpkins to dry on in the sun,

the dead man was carried to a primitive bench or table made of two slabs set upright in the ground about seven feet apart, and a third laid on them crossways. Here, while a woman sitting on a little mound at a distance, set up a most wild and melancholy wail for the departed, a priest, I know not his proper appellation, stepping forward began to offer up prayers to which the audience made an occasional response. The brief service concluded, once more the body was lifted and borne round the cemetery to its grave, that seemed to be about three feet six inches in depth. Here it was robbed of its gaycoloured scarves, of which a little child took charge, and after a good deal of animated discussion, lowered into the hole in a sitting posture with the help of two linen bands that one of the company unwound from about his middle. Then while a sheet was held over the corpse, as I suppose to prevent its face from being seen, some of the mourners arranged planks and the top of an old door in the grave above it, perhaps to keep it from contact with the earth. At this point we were obliged to leave as the carriage waited, and I am therefore unable to say if there was any further ceremony before the soil was finally heaped over the mortal remains of this departed and, I trust, estimable Turk.

Then we drove on across a grey expanse relieved now and again with patches of rich green barley breaking into ear. On our right the rugged, towering points of the five-fingered mountain called Pentadactylon, stood out above the black clouds of a furious storm of wind and rain which overtook us. Still we struggled forward through its gloom, till at length the sun shone forth, and in the glow of evening we saw the walls, palms and minarets of the ancient and beautiful city of Nicosia.

CHAPTER XIII

NICOSIA AND KYRENIA

NICOSIA looks little changed since first I saw it many years ago. The trees that were planted in portions of the moat by the governor of that day, Sir Henry Bulwer, have grown into considerable timbers, though, by the way, those set upon the rocky soil round the wooden Government House have not flourished as I hoped they would. Also the narrow streets are somewhat cleaner and more wholesome, if any Eastern town where all household slops are thrown out into the gutters or gardens can be called wholesome; that is about all. No, not quite all, for sundry houses have arisen outside the new city, pretty dwellings with gardens round them, inhabited for the most part by officials, and the old Konak, or Turkish government office, after standing for some six hundred years, has been in great part pulled down, and is now a gaping ruin. This seems to me a very wanton and illjudged act, for the building had many beauties which can never be seen again. Indeed on second thoughts the authorities appear to have shared this view, since when it was pressed upon them by some local antiquaries, they desisted from their destroying labours, leaving the unique gateway untouched, though, unless something is soon done to support it, not, I fear, for long. Now it is a sheltering place for wanderers, at least I found the blackest woman I ever saw, in bed there, who as I passed made earnest representations to me, in an unknown tongue, to what purpose I was unable to discover. It seemed odd to find so very black a person reposing