Nine Or Ten Vessels, Including Several Steamers, Were In The Roadstead, And A Number Of Lighters Were Employed In Landing Cargoes.

Disappointment and disgust were quickly banished by the reflection that at this season (January) there was nothing green in England:

The thermometer in that dreary land would be below freezing-point, while on the deck where we stood it was 64 degrees Fahr. We were quickly in a boat steering for the landing-place.

All towns look tolerably well from the sea, especially if situated actually upon the margin of the water. The town represented a front of about a mile, less than five feet above the level of the sea, bordered by a masonry quay perpendicular to the surface, from which several wooden jetties of inferior and very recent construction served as landing-places.

The left flank of Larnaca was bounded by a small Turkish fort, absolutely useless against modern artillery upon the walls the British flag was floating. We landed upon the quay. This formed a street, the sea upon one side, faced by a row of houses. As with all Turkish possessions, decay had stamped the town: the masonry of the quay was in many places broken down, the waves had undermined certain houses, and in the holes thus washed out by the action of water were accumulations of recent filth. Nevertheless, enormous improvements had taken place since the English occupation. An engineer was already employed in repairing the quay, and large blocks of carefully faced stone (a sedimentary limestone rock of very recent formation) were being laid upon a bed of concrete to form a permanent sea-wall. The houses which lined the quay were for the most part stores, warehouses, and liquor-shops. Among these the Custom House, the Club, Post Office, and Chief Commissioner's were prominent as superior buildings. There was a peculiar character in the interior economy of nearly all houses in Larnaca; it appeared that heavy timber must have been scarce before the town was built, as the upper floor was invariably supported by stone arches of considerable magnitude, which sprang from the ground-floor level. These arches were uniform throughout the town, and the base of the arch was the actual ground, without any pillar or columnar support; so that in the absence of a powerful beam of timber, the top of the one-span arch formed a support for the joists of the floor above. In large houses numerous arches gave an imposing appearance to the architecture of the ground floors, which were generally used as warehouses. Even the wooden joists were imported poles of fir, thus proving the scarcity of natural forests. The roofs of the houses were for the most part flat, and covered with tempered clay and chopped straw for the thickness of about ten inches. Some buildings of greater pretensions were gaudy in bright red tiles, but all were alike in the general waste of rain-water, which was simply allowed to pour into the narrow streets through innumerable wooden shoots projecting about six feet beyond the eaves.

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