This Spot Was Occupied By The Roughest Of Log-Huts, Which Had Been Erected By A Shepherd As His Summer Residence When The Goats Should Be Driven From The Low Ground To The Mountain Pasture.

This man was originally a Turk, and formed one of a peculiar sect known in Cyprus as Linobambaki (linen and cotton).

These people are said to be converts to Christianity, but in reality they have never been troubled with any religious scruples, and accordingly never accommodate their principles to the society of their neighbourhood. In a Turkish village the Linobambaki would call himself by a Turkish name, as Mahomet, or Hassan, &c., while in a Christian community he would pass as Michael or Georgy, or by other Greek appellations. The name "linen and cotton" applied to them is expressive of their lukewarmness and time-serving, their religious professions fluctuating according to the dictates not of conscience, but personal interest. It is supposed that about 1500 of these people exist in various parts of Cyprus; they are baptised in the Greek Church, and can thus escape conscription for military service according to Turkish law. The goatherd upon our mountain had been a Turkish servant (shepherd) in a Greek family, and had succeeded in gaining the heart of his master's daughter, whom he was permitted to marry after many difficulties. This woman must have been very beautiful when young, as, in spite of hard work and exposure, she was handsome at forty, with a pair of eyes that in youth might have been more attractive than the mysterious light in the hermit's cave. It is one of the blessings of fine eyes that they are almost certain to descend to the children. Property may vanish, litigation may destroy the substance of an inheritance; but the eyes, large, soft, and gentle, which can occasionally startle you by their power and subdue you by a tear, are the children's entail that nothing can disestablish. Even when time has trampled upon complexion, the eyes of beauty last till death.

The children of this Linobambaki and his handsome wife were seven--two boys of about nineteen and seventeen, and five girls from fourteen to one and a half--all of whom had the eyes of the mother developed most favourably. I cannot well describe every individual of a family: there were the two handsome shepherd youths who would have made level ground of mountain steeps, through their power and activity.

"Right up Ben Lomond could he press, And not a sob his toil confess."

These young fellows matched the goats in clambering up the rocks and following their wayward flocks throughout the summits of the Troodos range; and their sisters the little shepherdesses were in their way equally surprising, in hunting runaway goats from the deepest chasm to the sharpest mountain-peak.

I hardly know who was our greatest favourite. There was "Katterina" (about fourteen) too old to make a pet of, but a gentle-charactered girl, always willing to please and never out of temper, and even in the big, hateful, beauty-destroying, high hob-nailed boots she could run up the mountain soil and clamber like a monkey.

Enter page number Go  Previous Next
Page 187 of 274
Words from 97239 to 97767 of 143016