We observed a number of thin, white clouds, moving with great rapidity from south to north, in direct opposition to the course of the Etesian winds; these were immensely high. It was evident they came from the mountains of Abyssinia, where, having discharged their weight of rain, and being pressed by the lower current of heavier air from the northward, they had mounted to possess the vacuum, and returned to restore the equilibrium to the northward, whence they were to come back, loaded with vapour from Mount Taurus, to occasion the overflowing of the Nile, by breaking against the high and rugged mountains of the south. Nothing could be more agreeable to me than that sight, and the reasoning upon it. I already, with pleasure, anticipated the time in which I should be a spectator first, afterwards historian, of this phænomenon, hitherto a mystery through all ages. I exulted in the measures I had taken, which I flattered myself, from having been digested with greater confederation than those adopted by others, would secure me from the melancholy catastrophes that had terminated these hitherto-unsuccessful attempts. On the 16th, at dawn of day, I saw a high hill, which, from its particular form, described by Strabo[50], I took for Mount Olympus[51]. Soon after, the rest of the island, which seemed low, appeared in view. We scarce saw Lernica till we anchored before it. It is built of white clay, of the same colour as the ground, precisely as is the case with Damascus, so that you cannot, till close to it, distinguish the houses from the earth they stand upon. It is very remarkable that Cyprus was so long undiscovered[52]; ships had been used in the Mediterranean 1700 years before Christ; yet, though only a day’s sailing from the continent of Asia on the north and east, and little more from that of Africa on the south, it was not known at the building of Tyre, a little before the Trojan war, that is 500 years after ships had been passing to and fro in the seas around it. It was, at its discovery, thick covered with wood; and what leads me to believe it was not well known, even so late as the building of Solomon’s Temple, is, that we do not find that Hiram king of Tyre, just in its neighbourhood, ever had recourse to it for wood, though surely the carriage would have been easier than to have brought it down from the top of Mount Libanus. That there was great abundance in it, we know from Eratosthenes[53], who tells us it was so overgrown that it could not be tilled; so that they first cut down the timber to be used in the furnaces for melting silver and copper; that after this they built fleets with it, and when they could not even destroy it this way, they gave liberty to all strangers to cut it down for whatever use they pleased; and not only so, but they gave them the property of the ground they cleared.