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else at every corner lie encounters the inhabitants of it. Cockney and Yankee accents clash in the air close to him, and hands in every direction are red with ' Murray's ' and ' Biideker's.' The existence of the modern world is in no way eclipsed in his mind : the scene seems rather by contrast to bring it into jarring prominence. But in the bazaar of Nicosia everything conspired to make the modern world forgotten. In every sight, in every sound, in the very air itself, there was the flavour of another civilisation and of other centuries—one might almost say of another world. The men who passed were every one of them men who might have seen djins or effreets, have been wrecked on the Loadstone Mountain, or done wonders with talismans. There was not a face that might not have seen marvels, and probably not a heart that did not implicitly believe in them ; and the knowledge that this was so, through the quick action of sympathy, wrapped me round myself with the same mysterious atmosphere. Cairo, again, cannot, nor can any other town that I know of, offer anything comparable to the following experience, with which my first day's visit to the Nicosia bazaar concluded. After wandering about with me for a considerable time, Mrs. Falkland paused before a low squalid-looking arch, which divided tvvo shops, and said, 4 We will come this way.' Plunging through the arch, Ave emerged under the open sky amongst some outhouses, in a passage which seemed to lead only to somebody's back door. 112 IN AN ENCHANTED ISLAND

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