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SIR SAMUEL WHITE BAKER
CYPRUS AS I SAW IT IN 1879
page 237 View PDF version of this page The bottom upon which I stood was a mass of débris of bright colours, varying from pure white to different shades of yellow and red. This material appeared to have fallen recently, as the blocks did not exhibit the dull exterior that would have resulted from atmospherical exposure. I climbed up the steep face of crumbled matter with some difficulty, as the sharply inclined surface descended with me, emitting a peculiar metallic clink like masses of broken porcelain. On arrival at the top I remarked that only a few inches of vegetable mould covered a stratum of white marl about a foot thick, and this had been pierced in many places by the heat that had fused the marl and converted it into a clinker or sharply-edged white slag, mixed with . an ochreous yellow and bright red. I had never met with anything like this singular example of igneous* action upon marls. In the neighbourhood there wereconsiderable masses of the same clinker-like material, exhibiting a honeycombed appearance, that would have1 been well adapted for millstones. The natives in i formed me that all the millstones of the northern coasti| were imported from Athens. I had heard while at] Kythrea that the stones for the very numerous mills l of that neighbourhood were supplied from Alexan-; dretta, and that none of native origin were employed.' There can be no doubt that some of the specimensexamined of this material combined the requirements of extreme hardness, porosity, and sharpness of interior edges around the honeycombed cavities. I walked over the mountain, and quickly lost the marl in masses of plutonio rocks that had been upheaved and entirely occupied the surface. Although vast blocks lay heaped in the wildest confusion, they exhibited the peculiar characteristics of all Cyprian rocks (excepting the
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