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CLAUDE DELAVAL COBHAM
Exerpta Cypria
page 268

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who began to improve the place not a great many years ago, bnt were obliged to leave it on account of the Maltese privateers. About the village of Carpas there are a great number of small mined churches or chapels, which might formerly be built for the use of wealthy families, who might retire to this place. It was on the Carpasian shoars that Vivyenes Polioreetes landed his army. On the fifteenth we travelled eastward to the village of Asphronisy, where there are rains of fonr churches, and it seems to have been some an tient town ; for I saw on both sides of it mine of a wall extending towards the sea. We came to the most eastern point of the island, called by the antients the ox's tail, probably from some imaginary resemblance ; it is now called the cape of St Andrete, from a monastery which is cnt out of the rock, and dedicated to that saint. Opposite to the north east comer are the isles called CUdcs by the antients; the largest of which is not a mile in circumference; authors differ abont the number of them; those who name but two, probably took notice only of the two largest; there are two more that appear only as rocks, the furthest of which is not a mile from the land ; there is another which has some herbage on it, and may be the second as to its dimeiwions; it is so very near to the land that it may have been separateil from it since those authors wrote. At the north east corner there is a grot eut ont of the rock, which seems to have been a sepulchre ; there are some signs of a large enclosure round it, and higher are several sorts uf oblong square buildings of hewn stone, which appear but a very little above the ground, and seem to have had covers over them ; I conjecture that they were sepulchres of very great antiquity; one, which is bnilt in a more magnificent manner than the rest, made ine conclude that they might be the sepulchres of the antient kings of this part of Cyprus ; it consists of three enclosures ; there are bnt two tiers of stone above ground ; the outermost building is one and thirty feet square, and the walls are one foot nine inches thick; within it, at the distance of two feet six inches, there is a second, and, at the same distance within that, a third; the top of which is cut with a ledge within to receive a cover. It is possible the two outer walls might be built up higher, and there might have been entrances through thein to the sepulchre. The whole is a very particular sort of work, and of such a kind as I never saw in any other place. There are signs of foundations of a building on a little mount, which is a rock of marble of different colours stretching into the sea, and it is a very good situation for a light house, tho' there are some remains on a little point very near it, that have more the appearance of such a building. All this country to the east of Carpass for about twelve miles is almost Uninhabited, except that there are a few Turkish herdsmen on the south side, where there is a fine narrow plain. The desolate condition of this part uf the island is occasioned by the constant depredations of the Maltese privateers, who land more frequently here than in any other pait. From the eastern point I saw very plainly mount Cassias near Antioch, and the mountain of Rhossus, now called cape Sog, which is between Kepsé and Scanderoon. We travelled on southward from this point, and in less than an honr arrived at the uninhabited convent of saint Andrea, in which there formerly lived two or three monks. We went to the south side of the island, crossed the hills, and came to a very large village which is called Matron, which is about half a mile broad ; at the west end of it we began to cross the hills to the north, and saw a cape to the south called Peda. We arrived again at Carpass on the sixteenth, and went to the convent, of Jalousa, we passed by Selina, where I saw remains of pillars four feet in diameter, and came to Jalousa. On the seventeenth we went about two leagues to the south east uf Jalousa, near a place called Aimana, and came to a large grot cnt into a mountain, being very difficult of access; and there is another grot of EXCERPTA CYPRIA.

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