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
thunder might in such conditions produce an avalanche. We dug a deep
trench round the tents, as the weather looked overcast and stormy.
The village of Gallibornu was about half a mile beyond our camp at the
extreme end of the valley, but situated on the heights. The people were
extremely civil, and it would be difficult to determine the maximum
degree of courtesy between the Turks and Greeks of Cyprus. I strolled
with my dogs up the steep hill-sides, and the Turks, seeing that I was
fond of shooting, promised to accompany me on the following morning to
some happy hunting-ground, which, from my Cyprian experience, I believed
was mythical.
On waking the next day I found the Turks, true to their promise, already
assembled by the servants' tent, and eight men were awaiting me with
their guns. They had a sporting dog to assist them, which they described
as "very useful for following a wounded hare; only it was necessary to
be quick in securing it, otherwise the dog would eat it before your
arrival."
I advised them to leave this "useful dog" behind, as hostilities might
be declared by my three English spaniels in the event of his swallowing
a wounded hare. This being agreed to, we all started, and, crossing the
valley, entered a gorge upon the other side. We now ascended naked hills
of pure crystallised gypsum; the strata were vertical, and the perfectly
transparent laminae were packed together like small sheets of glass only
a few inches in width. It was easy to walk up the steep slopes of this
material without slipping, as the exterior edges, having been exposed to
the weather, had become rough, and were exactly like coarse glass placed
edgeways. We spread out into a line of skirmishers extending up the
hills upon both sides of the gorge, and quickly arrived in very likely
ground covered with dwarf-cypress. Here the dogs immediately flushed
partridges, and a Turk having wounded one, a considerable delay took
place in searching for it at the bottom of a deep wooded hollow, but to
no purpose. We now arrived at lovely ground within a mile of the sea,
forming a long succession of undulations, covered, more or less, with
the usual evergreen brushwood as far as the eye could reach. This uneven
surface, broken by many watercourses, was about eighty feet above the
water-level, and descended in steep rocky ledges to within a few hundred
yards of the sea, where the lower ground was flat and alternated in open
glades and thick masses of mastic scrub; the beach being edged by drift
sand-dunes covered by the dense jungle of various matted bushes.
Public-domain text, read in full here on John Shaqi.
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