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
The Cypriote well-sinker is wonderfully clever in discovering springs,
and I have already described the method of multiplying the water-power
of one source by securing and concentrating the neighbouring sources.
This work only requires money, and the inhabitants, without further
assistance than loans secured by a water-rate upon the district, will
rapidly develop the natural supply. There should be a special commission
appointed, in each of the six districts of Cyprus, to investigate and
report officially upon this subject. In forming the commission, care
should be taken that the native element should predominate, and that no
enthusiastic English engineer, blooming with new schemes, should thrust
into shadow the Cyprian intelligence upon the working of their own
systems. If I were an English engineer employed in any work, I should
probably have the natural failing of enforcing my own opinions; but from
many years' experience I have come to the conclusion that the
inhabitants of a country are generally better qualified than strangers
for giving practical opinions upon their own locations. There is plenty
of intelligence in Cyprus; the people are not savages, but their fault
is poverty, the natural inheritance of Turkish rule; and we, the
English, have the power to make them rich, and to restore the ancient
importance of the island. In England, at the time that I am writing,
money is not worth 2 per cent. owing to the general depression of trade;
the money-market has been in this plethoric or dropsical state for the
last three years, and there appears to be no hope upon the commercial
horizon of a favourable change. In Cyprus the resources are great, but
the capital is wanting, and the strange anomaly is presented that the
exchange of the British for the Turkish flag has not increased public
confidence. Something must be done to change the present stupor; if
Cypriotes were Candians (Cretans) their voices would be forcibly heard,
and the Turkish rule beneath the British uniform would be quickly
overthrown. The Cypriote, down-trodden for centuries, is like sodden
tinder that will not awaken to the spark: he is what is called "easily
governed;" which means an abject race, in which all noble aspirations
have been stamped out by years of unremitting oppression and injustice;
still, like the Cyprian ox, he ploughs the ground. It is the earth alone
that yields the world's wealth: if we have no other thoughts but
avarice, let us treat the Cypriote as we should his animal, and make him
a wealth-producer. England has acquired the reputation of the civiliser
of the world; it is in this character that we were expected to effect a
magic change in the position of Cyprus; instead of which we have
hitherto presented a miserable result of half-measures, where
irresolution has reduced the brilliant picture of our widely-trumpeted
political surprise to a dull "arrangement in whitey-brown" . . . which
is the pervading tint of the Cyprian surface in the absence of
Public-domain text, read in full here on John Shaqi.
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