HISTORY ETHNOGRAPHY NATURE WINE-MAKING SITE MAP
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 329

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the pickaxe at one shilling a day wages. The boys who were being educated for the Church I employed in removing all the loose stones which choked the surface of the ground, and subsequently in sweepin and scraping the courtyard. I gave them sixpence day if they worked from early morning, or three pence if they came at noon after their lessons. There was a shepherd's family, upon the hill about 250 fee above the monastery, of seven handsome children, tw boys of nineteen and seventeen, and five girls. Thes were hard at work, even to a pretty little child of fou years old, who carried her stones, and swept with little broom with all her heart (this was little Athena) Of course they were all paid in the evening wit bright new threepenny pieces which they had neve seen before. Even the priests worked after a fe days, when the spirit of industry and new shilling moved them, and in the history of the monastery ther could never have been such a stirring picture an such a dust as we made in cleansing and alterations Nearly a month was occupied in this necessary work by which time the place was entirely changed. I ha made a good road as an approach from the spring with a covered drain, dignified by the name of a " aqueduct, " which led the water when required to little garden that I had constructed close to the tent where a nondescript slope had become a receptacle fo filth. I had cut this down from the road, and mixe the earth with the accumulated dirt and manure, whic I levelled off in successive layers, so that the stream le from the spring would irrigate my beds in successio This garden was carefully fenced against the intrusio of goats and donkeys, to say nothing of pigs, andwas already sown with tomatoes, cucumbers, melon

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