The Energy Of English Ladies Rather Astonishes The
People Of This Country, Where Inertia Is Considered To Be Happiness, And
Although our animals were ordered to be saddled punctually at 6 A.M. the
owner in Lefkosia was sceptical as
To our actual start at so early an
hour; therefore much time was lost on the morning in question in sending
messengers vainly to and fro for the missing mule and pony; and 8 A.M.
arrived before their appearance. The party had started two hours
earlier. Colonel White, 1st Royal Scots, who was the chief commissioner
at Lefkosia, had kindly waited to accompany us. As St. Hilarion was only
a short distance to the left of the Kyrenia road, I had determined not
to return, but to send the camels and luggage on direct. We left all
unnecessary luggage locked up within the vans, which Sir Garnet Wolseley
kindly permitted us to leave at head-quarters. We took leave of our good
and big friend Georgi and his sharp companion Theodori, who returned to
Dali, where Georgi would meet the only Venus that I have seen in Cyprus,
his wife; but even that pretty Venus was ruined by high boots and baggy
trousers.
Crossing the dry bed of the Pedias below the Government House, we struck
a line over the open and withered plain to a direct route to Kyrenia. At
a distance of about five miles from Lefkosia, the broad and well-trodden
road became lost in a variety of independent paths, which at length
converged into one narrow route that ascended a curious formation of
water-washed and utterly denuded hills, composed of sandstone,
claystone, and peculiar deposits of sedimentary rock, which in places
resembled an artificial pavement. In many places the strata were
vertical, exhibiting the confusion that had been created by the
upheaval. Having passed through a succession of ups and downs for about
three miles, sometimes winding through narrow gorges where the soil was
covered with an efflorescence of salt, at other places clambering over
loose rocks and entering narrow glens, we arrived in a plain at the foot
of the bold and bluff range of the Carpas mountains. The path led to a
village almost concealed amongst dwarf-cypress and pines, at a spot
where the ascent commenced to a deep gorge forming a gap between the
heights upon either side, through which the road was being rendered
accessible for wheeled conveyances to Kyrenia.
We had quitted the Messaria and its misery; thank Heaven, we once more
looked upon green trees, and magnificent cliffs of compact grey
limestone tinted with various colours according to the presence of
metallic substances, instead of wearying the eyes with the depressing
brown of a withered surface. The road was improving under the hands of
several working parties, and the animals stepped along at a cheerful
pace. On the left hand were exceedingly steep slopes, ascending for
several hundred yards to the base of cliffs, which rose in many places
almost perpendicular to the height of more than 2000 feet above the sea.
Upon our right we skirted a deep ravine, the bottom and sides of which
were completely covered with mastic shrubs, and myrtles.
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