Even Georgi's Pretty Wife Was Untidy About The Hair, Although She Was In Her Best Attire; And A Close Inspection Of All Women And Girls Showed That Their Throats And Breasts Were Literally Covered With Ancient And Modern Fleabites.

Their dwellings are extremely filthy, and swarm with vermin, as the fowls, goats, or even a cow or two, generally increase the domestic party.

It is well known that Paphos in Cyprus was the supposed birthplace of Venus, and that the island was at one time celebrated for the beauty of women and immorality: the change has been radical, as I believe no women are more chaste, and at the same time less attractive, than the Cypriotes of the present time. They are generally short and thickset; they are hardly treated by the men, as they perform most of the rough work in cultivation of the ground, and, from the extreme coarseness of their hands, they can seldom be idle; the men, on the contrary, are usually good-looking, and are far more attentive to their personal appearance.

Dali was an interesting spot to any agriculturist. The soil was exceedingly rich, as it had been formed, like all valleys in Cyprus, by the alluvium washed down from the surrounding hills; these were from three to six hundred feet above the level of the plain, and were composed of the usual hard species of chalk and gypsum; thus the deposit from their denudation by rains supplied the chief constituents for the growth of vines and cereals.

There is a depressing absence of all recent improvements in journeying through Cyprus; even at Dali, where the water from the river was used for irrigation, and large farms in the occupation of the wealthy landowner, M. Richard Mattei, were successfully cultivated, I could not help remarking the total neglect of tree-planting. The ancient olive-groves still exist by the river's side, and, could they speak, those grand old trees would be historians of the glorious days of Cyprus; but there are no recent plantations, and the natives explained the cause in the usual manner by attributing all wretchedness and popular apathy to the oppression of the Turkish rule. This wholesale accusation must be received with caution; there can be no doubt of the pre-existing misrule, but at the same time it is impossible to travel through Cyprus without the painful conviction that the modern Cypriote is a reckless tree-destroyer, and that destruction is more natural to his character than the propagation of timber. There is no reason for the neglect of olive-planting, but I observed an absence of such cultivation which must have prevailed during several centuries, even during the Venetian rule. It is difficult to determine the age of an olive-tree, which is almost imperishable; it is one of those remarkable examples of vegetation that illustrates the eternal, and explains the first instincts of adoration which tree-worship exhibited in the distant past. I spent some hours with the olive trees of Dali; they were grand old specimens of the everlasting.

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