Haggard Anthology Vol 16, page 65
Having delivered up the weapon of war and been given an elaborate receipt for the same, we proceeded to our hotel accompanied by a motley collection of various blood and colour, each of them bearing a small piece of our exiguous belongings, whereof the bulk, it will be remembered, had travelled to Reggio. These folk, however, are not exorbitant in their demands and do not grumble or ask for more. Tourists have not come to Cyprus to spoil it; I never heard of an American even setting foot on the island, therefore a shilling here goes as far as five elsewhere.
The hotel at Larnaca is now I believe the only one in Cyprus. It stands within a few feet of the shore—safely enough, for the sea is tideless—is comfortable, with large, cool rooms, and absurdly cheap. I grieve to add that its proprietor cannot make it pay. No travellers visit this lovely and most interesting isle, in ancient days the garden of the whole Mediterranean, therefore there are no hotels. Once there was one at Limasol, but it failed and converted itself into a hospital. He who would journey here must either rely upon tents, which are a poor shelter before the month of April, or upon the kind and freely offered hospitality of the Government officials. Naturally this lack of accommodation frightens away tourists, which for many reasons in a poor country like Cyprus is a vast pity. Yet until the tourist comes it is idle to expect that conveniences for his reception will be provided. So this matter stands.
Where Larnaca now lies was once the ancient Citium, of which the marsh near at hand is believed to have been the harbour. Quite half of the present town, indeed, is said to be built upon the necropolis of Citium, whence comes its name, Larnaca, derived, it is supposed, from Larnax, an urn or a sepulchre. The town is divided into two parts, Larnaca proper and the Marina along the seashore, which is reported to have been recovered within the last few centuries from the bed of the ocean.
After luncheon we went to a house whose owner deals occasionally in curiosities. Of these and all antiquities indeed the export is forbidden except to the British Museum, private digging having been put a stop to in the island, as its inhabitants aver, in the especial interest of that institution. Here we saw a few nice things, but the price asked was impossible, £12 being demanded for a set of little glass vases which I should have valued at 40s. So we left the place, richer only by an Egyptian or Phoenician spear-head of Cyprian copper, a very excellent specimen, and walked to the upper town about a mile away to take tea with Mr. Cobham, the Commissioner.
Mr. Cobham lives in a beautiful house which he has purchased. For generations it had been the abode of the British consuls at Larnaca, but was abandoned by them many years ago. Here in a noble room he has his unique collection of ancient books written by travellers during the last five or six centuries, and others dealing with, or touching on, Cyprus and its affairs. It is from these sources that its learned author has compiled the work known as Excerpta Cypria, which consists of translations from their pages, a book invaluable to students, but now unhappily out of print. I considered myself fortunate in being able to purchase a set of the sheets at an advanced price in the capital, Nicosia, where it was printed.
Set upon a wall of the saloon in this house and although newly painted, dating from a century and a half or more ago, is a fine, carved example of the royal arms of England. This very coat, as Mr. Cobham has ascertained, used to stand over the doors of the old British Consulate during the tenancy of his house by the consuls. When they left it was taken down and vanished, but within the last few years he found it in a stable in Larnaca, whence the carving was rescued, repainted by some craftsmen on board an English man-of-war which visited Cyprus, and after a hundred years or so of absence, returned in triumph to its old home.
Cyprus is fortunate in possessing in Mr. Cobham an official who takes so deep an interest in her history, and spares no expense or pains in attempting its record. On 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 purpose 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.
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 no 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 coceinea 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 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 prices.
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. Here 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 mediaeval 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 Coeur-de-Lion 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 carcase, 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?
It was very interesting to watch the beautiful gulls that followed the vessel off this coast, the wind blowing against them making not the slightest difference to the perfect ease of their motion. So near did they hang that I could see their quick, beady eyes glancing here and there, and the strong bills of a light pink hue. From time to time as I watched, one of them would catch sight of something eatable in the water. Then down he went and suddenly from the feathers of his underpart out shot his claws, also pink-coloured, just as though he were settling upon a tree or rock. Why, I wonder, does a gull do this when about to meet the water? To break his fall perhaps. At least I can suggest no other reason, unless in the dim past his progenitors were wont to settle upon trees and he is still unable to shake off an hereditary habit.
At length on the low mountain-hedged coast-line appeared the white houses, minarets and scattered palms of Limasol, with its jetty stretching out into the blue waters. The town looked somewhat grown, otherwise its aspect seems much the same as when first I saw it many years ago.
So we landed, and after more custom-house formalities, marched through the crowded streets of the little town, preceded by stalwart Cypriotes bearing our belongings, to dine (in borrowed garments) with the kind friends who were awaiting us upon the pier.
Our first occupation on the following morning was to retain the services of three mules and their coal-black muleteer, doubtless the offspring of slaves imported in the Turkish days, known to us thenceforth by a corruption of his native name or designation which we crystallised into "Cabbages." For a sum of about thirty shillings a week this excellent and intelligent person placed himself and his animals at our disposal, to go whither we would and when we would.
Our first expedition was to a massive tower, or rather keep, called Colossi, which stands at a distance of about six miles from Limasol, in the midst of very fertile fields upon the Paphos road. Off we went, my nephew and myself riding our hired mules and the rest of the party upon their smart ponies, which in Cyprus are very good and cheap to buy and feed.
I have now had considerable experience of the mule as an animal to ride, and I confess that I hate him. He has advantages no doubt. Over rough ground in the course of an eight or ten hours' day he will cover as great a distance as a horse, and in the course of a week or less he will wear most horses down. Also he will live somehow where the horse would starve. But what a brute he is! To begin with, his fore-quarters are invariably weak, and feel weaker than they are. The Cypriote knows this and rides him on a native saddle, a kind of thick padded quilt so cruppered that he is able to sit far back, almost on the animal's tail indeed, as, doubtless for the same reason, the costermonger rides a donkey. To the stranger, until he grows accustomed to it, this saddle is most uncomfortable, but old residents in the island generally prefer to use it upon a long journey. Also it is dangerous to the uninitiated, since the stirrups are very short. Not being fixed they slide from side to side suddenly lengthening themselves, let us say to the right, with any unguarded movement, which will produce a proportionate curtailment on the left and the unexpected consequence that the traveller finds himself face downwards on the ground. With a European saddle this particular accident cannot happen, also it is more comfortable for a short journey. As a set-off to this advantage, however, the rider's weight comes upon that portion of his steed which is least able to support it, namely the withers. The result is that the mule, especially if pushed out of its customary amble, sometimes falls as though it were shot, propelling him over its head.
It is a mistake to suppose, also, that these creatures are always sure-footed; many of them stumble abominably, although they do not often actually fall. Never shall I forget my first mule-ride in Cyprus in the days when there were no roads. It was from Nicosia to Kyrenia, a distance of about sixteen miles over a mountain path. The muleteer into whose charge I was given was a huge man weighing at least eighteen stone, and I thought to myself that where this monster could go, certainly I could follow.
In this I was right, I did follow, but at a very considerable distance. Mr. Muleteer perched himself upon his animal, doubtless one of the best in the island, looking in his long robes for all the world like a gigantic and half-filled sack, and off we ambled. Scarcely were we clear of the town when my mule, unaccustomed, I suppose, to the weight upon his withers and the European saddle, began to stumble. I do not exaggerate when I say that he stumbled all the way to Kyrenia, keeping me absolutely damp with apprehension of sudden dives on to my head down precipitous and unpleasant places. Meanwhile Mr. Muleteer, very possibly anticipating my difficulties, had been careful to place about five hundred yards between us, a distance which he maintained throughout the journey. I yelled for assistance—in fact I wished to persuade him to exchange mules—but either he would not or he could not hear; moreover he had no knowledge of my tongue, or I of his. So we accomplished that very disagreeable journey.
Once, however, I made one much more dangerous, this time over the rarely travelled mountains of Chiapas in Mexico. My companions, I remember, had excellent mules—they lived in the country; that given to me as the lighter weight was weak and poor, with no fore-legs worth mentioning. We scrambled up the mountains somehow, but when it came to descending, the fun began. A road in Tabasco, then at any rate, was made of three component parts. First, a deep and precipitous ditch worn out by the feet of generations of animals, covered at the bottom with from six inches to a foot of red butter, or clay quite as greasy as butter, down which one slowly slithered. Secondly, stretches, sometimes miles in length, of swamp land where the path consists of little ridges of hard clay about two feet apart, the space between each ridge into which the mule must step, filled with some three feet of liquid and tenacious mud that often reached to the saddle-flap. Thirdly, when the swamps were passed great tracts of the most grizzly precipices, which to my taste were worst of all. Along these steeps the path, never more than three to five feet in width, would run across boulder-strewn and sloping rock very slippery in nature. Below yawned chasms more or less sheer, of anything from two to fifteen hundred feet in depth.
Now a mule always chooses the extreme edge of a precipice. For this reason: its load is commonly bound on in large, far-protruding bales or bags. Were it therefore to walk on the inner side of the path, it would constantly strike its burden against the cliff, so, not being troubled with nerves, it clings to the outer edge. A common result is that in going round a corner it meets another mule proceeding from the opposite direction. Thereon in the attempt to struggle past one of the pair vanishes into space and with it the load, merchandise or man.
On this particular Mexican journey I very nearly came to a sudden and untimely end. The mule will not go your way, he always goes his own. At one point on the precipice path it forked, the lower fork being rough but safe and solid, the upper, which travelled round some twenty yards and then again joined the lower, smooth but exceedingly greasy. The mule insisted upon taking the top road, with the result that when we reached its apex he began to slide. Down we shot, ten or fifteen paces to the very edge of that awful cliff and, I confess it without shame, I have rarely been in such a fright in my life. Indeed I thought that I must be gone, there seemed no help for it, since to dismount was quite impossible. At the utter verge of the gulf, however, the animal put on a sort of vacuum brake of which a mule alone has the secret, and when its head was absolutely hanging over it, we stopped. That day also this same trusty creature fell with me in the midst of a flooded river, and in the evening I ended an entertaining journey by being slung across another roaring torrent some eighty yards wide in a loop of string attached to a very rotten rope, along which I was pulled in jerks. But of the varied experiences of that expedition I must not stop to tell. I lived through it, so let its memory be blessed.
