After the long reign of Turkish misrule it will be easily understood that Commissioner Wauchope and his colleague Lieutenant Duff did not all at once find things easy. On the contrary, they found it very hard work. The rascality of the natives was as idyllic as innocence. Murder and theft were so common that they were scarcely considered culpable, and this in what has been called an {62} 'enchanted island,' full of every beauty to satisfy the eye, and every fruit to satisfy the taste. Even ten years after the occupation by the British, and notwithstanding all our efforts to restore order and justice, W. H. Mallock, describing his visit to Cyprus in 1888, says that 'he found there more crime in proportion to the population than in any other known country in the world.' In Nicosia the prisons were full of persons, male and female, confined for murder, theft, etc. 'In the country districts,' he says, 'the cause of murders has generally some connection with sheep-stealing or disputes about boundaries and water rights, or matters equally simple. In the towns the Turkish murders nearly always originate in some ordinary fit of sombre but sudden passion, and the Greek murders in some half-drunken brawl. Curiously enough, a number of these last take place at weddings. Wine has flowed; quarrelling has arisen out of laughter; knives have flashed, and in a second or two one knife has been red with blood. Yet amid so much crime there exists among this degraded people a whimsical simplicity almost justifying a smile.' One instance, as given by Mr. Mallock, will suffice to illustrate this. One of three men implicated in a murder fled to the hut of a shepherd, and begged to be kept there in hiding. The shepherd, who had only a slight acquaintance with the man, asked why he wished to be hidden. On this the murderer, more like a child than a man, explained everything in the most naïve manner possible. The shepherd looked grave. He said that this was a serious matter, and that under the circumstances his protection would have to be paid for. The murderer replied that the booty had not yet been divided; 'I have no money,' he said, 'but save me and I will steal a sheep for you!' {63} [Sidenote: A Cyprian judge]