Cyprus, as I Saw It in 1879Baker, Samuel White, Sir
History
Cyprus, as I Saw It in 1879
Baker, Samuel White, Sir
Cyprus -- Description and travel
This was the first instance of incivility that I had met with in our
journey through the island. The man was a Turk, and was not the
proprietor, but only the agent for this wretchedly-neglected property.
The unfortunate owner was sleeping with his fathers, or he would, I feel
sure, have welcomed us with true Turkish politeness and hospitality but
having departed this life, some legal difficulties had occasioned
trouble, and the estate was in the hands of the uncivil agent, who, of
course, being nobody, assumed the airs of somebody, and endeavoured by
rudeness to exhibit his importance. We were travel-stained and dusty as
millers, therefore our personal appearance had not impressed him
favourably; he was in a thread-bare long black cloth habit that
combined the cloak, dressing-gown, and frock-coat in a manner
inexplicable, and known only to Turks. This garment was trimmed in the
front edges with rather mangy-looking fox-skin: loose pegtop trousers of
greasy-looking cloth, dirty and threadbare, completed the costume of the
great curiosity of Cyprus, "a rude person."
I was not at the time aware that he understood Arabic, and happily I
addressed Amarn in that language, expressing my surprise that in this
country, where we had travelled so widely and found civility upon all
sides, we should be subjected to such rudeness. My servants, who were
more annoyed than myself, spoke rather loudly, and assured him that if
he was a Turk, their master was a pasha of his Sultan, and we would at
once quit his miserable neglected ground and mention his inhospitality
to the chief commissioner. By this time the rear baggage animals had
appeared, and the imposing array of luggage and people seemed to impress
him with the fact that we were neither gipsies nor vagabonds. I
explained to him that we should not have presumed to intrude within a
walled garden, but as the old walls had disappeared and the place was in
an open and ruinous condition, we had trespassed innocently. He
disappeared with an apology, but upon the first opportunity after we had
examined the neighbourhood of Limasol we changed our camp to a good
position on the eastern outskirts of the town. This side was rich in
caroub-trees, and had grass existed it would have formed a park: the
ground sloped from the mountains, about six miles distant, gradually to
the sea, the surface was richly wooded by caroubs throughout, and the
soil was cultivated with barley, which was already in the hands of
reapers. There were six caroub-trees in a line which connected their
shade, and we soon cleared the cultivated, but withered, surface of the
large clods of earth, which, having been turned up by the plough, had
baked beneath the sun into the hardness of bricks; these were arranged
in a square to mark the limits of the camp, while the interior area was
pounded to produce an even floor; from this position we looked upon the
sea, about a quarter of a mile distant, and upon the town of Limasol
upon our right.
Public-domain text, read in full here on John Shaqi.
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