At Some Future Time Cyprus Will Become The Resort Of Delicate Persons To
Escape The Winter And Spring Of England, As The Climate Of The Southern
Portion Of The Island Is Most Enjoyable During The Cool Season.
In the
neighbourhood of Limasol there are many excellent sites for building, in
picturesque spots within two or three miles of the town.
At present
there is no adequate comfort for invalids, and the hotels are hardly
adapted for persons who are accustomed to luxury. The commencement is
attended with risk, and it would be dangerous under the existing
conditions of the island to build and furnish an hotel with grounds and
gardens sufficiently attractive for English visitors. There is no direct
communication from England, which effectually debars Cyprus from an
influx of travellers. It is necessary to land at Alexandria either from
Marseilles or Brindisi, and thence to re-ship in small and uncomfortable
steamers, which are by no means suitable for ladies or invalids. The
extra expense, and above all the trouble and delay of landing in Egypt
and again embarking, together with the cost of hotel charges at
Alexandria, are quite sufficient to deter strangers from visiting
Cyprus. The first necessary step will be the establishment of direct
communication from Marseilles and Brindisi, or from Trieste. In that
case, a commencement might be made by a small company of friends who
determine to visit Cyprus annually, and to arrange an hotel upon some
favourable site near Limasol, which they will themselves occupy, and
which can be extended according to future requirements. English people
are somewhat like sheep in following each other, and a quiet beginning
in this simple but convenient form would quickly develop, and Cyprus
would be linked with the beaten paths of tourists. The neighbourhood of
Kyrenia is the most beautiful, but during winter it is exposed to severe
north winds from the snowy mountains.
So much has been written and spoken against the climate of Cyprus that
an unprejudiced account may be acceptable. There are serious
disadvantages to those who by their official position are obliged to
remain in the low country during the summer months, where the extreme
heat must always be prejudicial to the health of Europeans. From the
middle of October to May the climate is most agreeable, but the five
intervening months should be passed at higher altitudes, which, as I
have already described, afford a variety of climates.
Neither Lady Baker nor myself or servants had any climatic ailment
throughout our journeys in every portion of the island. A horsekeeper
had fever while at Famagousta, but he was a native who had suffered
previously, and the fit was a return of chronic ague; my own people
never required a dose of medicine although we were living in tents
through winter and summer.
The water is generally wholesome, therefore dysentery and bowel
complaints are rare; CONSUMPTION IS UNKNOWN; and pulmonary affections
are uncommon. Fevers, including those of a typhoid character, and ague
from malaria, are the usual types; outbreaks of small-pox have been
reduced by general vaccination. The improvement in sanitary regulations
will no doubt diminish the occurrence of typhoid fevers, which even now
are rare considering the filth of the villages and the generally dirty
habits of the population.
Hydrophobia among dogs is very rare, and distemper among puppies is
unknown. Pigs are the general scavengers in the Cypriote villages, and
the flesh of these filthy feeders is much esteemed by the Christian
inhabitants during the winter months. In the monasteries, which, from
their great altitude among the mountains, are occasionally snowed up and
excluded from communication, a winter supply of stores is laid up during
the autumn. The pigs and the fattest goats are killed, and salted in a
most peculiar manner. Without removing a bone, the animal is split from
the neck along the abdomen throughout, and it is laid completely open
like a smoked haddock. Every joint is most carefully dislocated, even to
the shoulder-blade bones, and remains in its place. The flesh is neatly
detached from every bone, and in this form the carcase is salted, and
stretched out in the sun to dry. When prepared it resembles a shield, as
it remains perfectly flat, the back presenting a smooth surface, while
the inside represents a beautiful specimen of comparative anatomy, every
joint dislocated, but secured by the original integument to the socket,
and every bone cleanly detached, but undisturbed from its original
position. The dried body looks like a surgical preparation carefully
arranged for an explanatory lecture.
The common and low quality of food of the lower classes, and especially
of the agricultural population, must induce a want of stamina which is
unable to resist the fever in malarious districts, and this results in
chronic disease of the spleen. I have already described the general
protuberance of the abdomen among the children throughout the Messaria
and the Carpas districts, all of whom are more or less affected by
splenetic diseases. On the mountains a marked difference is observed, as
throughout the numerous villages at high altitudes the children are as
healthy as those of England, although poorly clad in the home-made
cotton-stuffs of the country.
I have already remarked the absence of flannel or other woollen material
worn next the skin; the natives prefer their own manufactures to those
of Europe, and as they grow the cotton, which is spun and woven into
cloth by their own women, there is no actual outlay of coin. Some of the
native material is very superior in strength to the machine-made stuffs
of Manchester, especially a blue stout cotton with a thin red line that
is in general request both for men and women. The only woollen stuff
that is manufactured in Cyprus is confined to Nicosia, where the dark
brown and immensely thick capotes are made for the winter wear of the
common people. A cart-driver during the halt in a winter night simply
draws the hood over his head and face, and, wrapped in his long and
impervious capote, he lays himself beneath his cart and goes to sleep.
Coarse woollen saddle-cloths and bags are also made at Nicosia.
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