Cyprus: Historical and DescriptiveLöher, Franz von
History
Cyprus: Historical and Descriptive
Löher, Franz von
Cyprus -- Description and travel; Cyprus -- History
This is the chief sea-port in the island, and has a fair anchorage
for vessels in the roadstead. Near Larnaka is the well-known inland
lake, whence in ancient days, the Phœnicians obtained the best salt.
During the rainy season, this is swollen with water; in May and June it
gradually evaporates, and under the fiery sun, and burning heat of July
and August, the water almost boils off, and leaves behind a thick cake
of nearly pure salt. This once yielded a yearly income of three hundred
thousand ducats. This town is connected by telegraph with Latakia, on
the Syrian coast, the wires passing through Nikosia.
Famagusta, on the south-east coast, a few miles south of old
Salamis, and not far from the ancient Tamassus, occupies the site
of Ammochostos, one of the ten royal cities, which paid tribute
to Esarhaddon, and possesses the only harbour between Salamis and
Leuculla, and was probably the city called Arsinœ under the Ptolemies.
“The city of Famagusta,” says Cesnola, “built by the Christians eight
hundred years ago, from the ruins of Salamis, and destroyed by the
Turks in 1571, after the terrible siege in which the Venetian soldiers
so heroically defended their position, once counted its beautiful
churches by hundreds and its palatial residences by thousands. Once it
had been one of the principal commercial cities of the Levant, with a
harbour, in which rode large fleets, but which now, through neglect,
has become filled with sand, and is able only to float ships of light
draught. It was just outside the mouth of this closed harbour, that
the vessels containing the Venetian families and their most precious
personal and household effects were sunk by the faithless Mustapha
Pacha, after he had killed the Venetian generals.”
“As you approach the massive walls of the city, which are nearly
seventeen feet thick, and of solid stone, all taken from the ruins of
Salamis, you see how impossible it was to take such a city except by
famine or treachery. The walls stand now as impregnable and intact as
when raised by the Lusignans.
“The old bronze guns of the Republic of Venice are still on the
bastions, in their original place, looking formidably towards the sea,
and the plain of Salamis, but spiked and out of service since 1571.
There are a half dozen rusty iron guns of Turkish manufacture, pretty
much in the same condition.
Public-domain text, read in full here on John Shaqi.
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