The better class of houses stand within a court-yard and garden, and are furnished with large verandahs, supported by light pillars. Women and girls of the lowest class were to be seen lounging about the narrow, crooked streets. As I quitted the town, the day became all that a traveller could desire. The air was bright and pure, and a balmy breeze swept over the green plains. The swallows were skimming through the air, and countless larks were trilling their sweetest notes. Cyprus, I must here observe, is very bountifully supplied with birds. I was told that many thousand larks were offered in the market-place of Larnaka. The eggs of the partridge are still more esteemed, and I have often heard the call of these birds in the grass towards evening. As I pursued my journey, I soon found myself between ranges of chalk hills, and then passed for miles over bleached and barren highlands. These form part of a chain of hills, connected towards the south with the western range of mountains, and extending in a long line to the sea. Very rarely, we passed a little hut, standing in a blooming garden, and forming a veritable oasis in this miniature desert. As I reached the last height, I obtained a peep of the sea near Larnaka, whilst before me, towards the northern portion of the island, towered a superb range of mountains, bristling with innumerable peaks, and tinted with various shades of brown. This chain extends north of the western mountains to the coast, where passing onwards into the sea, it forms the groundwork of the Carpasian peninsula. To my left were also broad, dark, stupendous mountains, running through the whole western portion of the island. One peak, the “Troados,” formerly the Cyprian “Olympus,” reared a snow-covered crown. At my feet lay the extensive plains of Messaria, watered by mountain streamlets, and forming one huge cornfield. A group of thirteen camels, tended by two negroes, stood in a pasture ground beneath me, and imparted a still more Eastern character to the scene. These negroes were probably paid servants, but formerly black slaves were commonly employed in this island. The Government has forbidden this traffic in human flesh; but as a negro will do a better day’s work than five Cypriotes, their introduction is winked at, and many are landed in the northern havens, and are taken by night to the neighbouring mountains.