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as I hail slept on boards in the boat without pulling off my clothes, Mr V'ondiziano, my host, is a man in easy circumstances (a native of Cepha Ionia), whose family consists of a wife and five daughters. And most heartily glad we were to escape from a boat, in which there was no subordination, and each man had equal command : and besides the danger from their ignorance, most of them were Candiotes, which is saying all that is bad of them, as the Candiotes are, without any exception (if the palm be not disputed with them by the inhabitants of the Seven Islands), the most atrocious scoundrels of the Levant, so fruitful in villany... Monday, March 13. When I rose in the morning I was happy to find myself iu the house of a British consul, who keeps up the dignity of his character. He has the King's Arms over the door of his house, at which two janizaries are stationed. From the I3th to the 10th Γ employed myself in writing with ink my journal, which 1 kept in pencil as I came along. Indeed the streets of Larnaca, being nnpaved, are so miry that there was little temptation to walk. From my window 1 had a view of a flat plain, bounded by mountains, which being all marsh land must be fatally unwholesome in summer. I was glad to make acquaintance with Mr H., an English merchant, living in the Marina, who introduced me to his wife, a native of the island; he strolled with me about the bazaars, which are mean and unprovided ; and showed me the Greek Church, a heavy building of the Low Empire, and the English burying-ground, where are interred many Englishmen, some of whom have handsome tombstones over them, dated the beginning of the last century, when the English factory here consisted of fifteen or sixteen houses. The burying-ground is now, however, falling to decay, as the Greeks also are interred there, and many masons have been working on the tombs, by which they have quite effaced the inscriptions of the flat ones. The Marina consists of warehouses, and a few houses and huts, in which live some merchants, Europeans and Greeks, porters and boatmen. Friday, March 17. Cyprus, Mr V.* tells me, is nearly 600 miles in circumference, an extent which would require at least a population of a million to cultivate it so well as the excellency of the soil deserves : especially as, unlike the other islands of these seas, it is chiefly laid out in fine plains, a very small part of it being mountainous. The population has, however, been reduced by the tyranny of the government to between 60,000 and 70,000 souls, of whom about 40,000 are Greeks: of these there are in Larnaea, including the Marina, between five and six thousand; and in Nicosia, which under the Venetians contained 30,000, 15,000, These are the only populous towns of the island, the others being almost desert. Imperfectly as it is cultivated, it abounds in every production of nature, and bears great quantities of com, figs, olives, oranges, lemons, dates, and indeed of every fruit seen in these climates : it nourishes great numbers of goats, sheep, pigs and oxen, of which latter it has at times exported supplies to Malta. Its principal commerce consists in cotton, wool, provisions (of which it sends supplies to Syria and Egypt, and particularly did so to onr expedition there) and silk, of which latter the trade was 150 years ago so considerable as to attract here an English factory. The following is the state of its commerce, delivered from the Custom-house about ten years ago : being the annual amount of the exportation :— Cotton—average quantity 3000 cantare (one cantar here is ISO okes, four times that of Constantinople) ; average price 280 piastres a cantar: nearly all this goes to Europe. White Silk—average quantity 10,000 okes of 400 drachms each; average price 15 piastres an oke: nearly all goes to Egypt. Yellow Silk—average quantity 5000 okas; average price 31 piastres: nearly all goes to Egypt. TURNER. 425 c. 54

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