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Selected and rare materials, excerpts and observations from ancient, medieval and contemporary authors, travelers and researchers about Cyprus.
 
 
 
 
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SIR SAMUEL WHITE BAKER
CYPRUS AS I SAW IT IN 1879
page 365

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most favoured country. Water, like fire, should be the slave of man, to whom it is the first necessity; therefore his first effort in his struggle with the elements should reduce this power to vassalage. There must be no question of supremacy ; water must serve mankind. Many years ago I published, in the Nile Tributaries of Abyssinia, my ideas for the control of the Nile and the submersion of the cataracts by a series of weirs, with water-gates for the facility of navigation ; which with certain modifications will some day assuredly be carried out, and will render Egypt the most favoured country of the world, as absolute mistress of the river : which is now at the same time a tyrant and a slave. The Pedias of Cyprus may during some terrific rainfall assume proportions that would convey a most erroneous impression to the mind of a stranger, who, upon regarding the boiling torrent overspreading a valley of some miles in width in its impetuous course towards ancient Salamis, might conclude that it was a river of the first importance. The fact is that no river exists in Cyprus : what should be rivers are mere channels, watercourses, brooks, torrents, or any of the multifarious names for stream-beds that may be discovered in an English dictionary. A t the same time that the natural channels are dry during the summer months, through the want of power in the water-head to overcome the absorption of the porous soil throughout its course, it must not b forgotten that a certain supply exists at the fountain head, within practicable distance, which might be stored and led from the mountains to the lower lands for the purposes of irrigation. When we reflect that in the proverbially wet climate of England there is a considerable difficulty in assuring a supply ofj

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