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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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CLAUDE DELAVAL COBHAM
Exerpta Cypria
page 468

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piratical schooner ou the N.E. side of Cyprus. We read a procès-verbal, taken before the French Consul, of the treatment received by one of the passengers: it was indeed most atrocious. We hope to fall iu with the pirate on our return from Beirut. We hear from Alexandria that the Egyptian fleet of eighty-nine sail had sailed for the Morea; two ships of the line, nine frigates, twenty corvettes and brigs, and forty-eight transports with four thousand troops ou board. Average height of thermometer, 82* iu the shade on board. Much ophthalmia and fever at Cyprus. Exports silk, cotton, wine. August 17. We weighed at aliont 2 P.M. for Beirut. GORDON. Thomas (General) Gordon, F.R.S., b. 1788, d. 1841, educated at Eton and Oxford, a Cornet in the Scots Greys, left the British service in 1810, and at various dates held commands among the insurgents in the Greek Revolution. "He spoke both Greek and Turkish with ease, and could even carry on a, correspondence in the Turkish language. His History of the Greek Revolution is a work of such accuracy in detail, tliat it has served as one of the sources from which the principal Greek historian of the Revolution (Sp. Tricoupi) has compiled his narrative of most military operations." (Finlay, vi. 411.) Thut work, published in two volumes at Edinburgh in 183a, was reviewed by T. De Quîucey (Works, ed. Masson, VII. 279) and translated into Turkish. We extract from vol. I. pp. 102—194, so much as concerns Cyprus. A NARRATIVE OF THE CALAMITIES OF CYPRUS. That celebrateti island, 140 miles iu length and 63 in breadth, is intersected by a range of mountains, called Olympus by the ancients, terminating towards the East in a long promontory. The soil is fruitful, und although but a small part of the land is under cultivation the merchants of Larnaka nevertheless exported annually, during the late wars, man}' cargoes of excellent wheat to Spain and Portugal. Its population, thought in 1814 not to exceed 70,000, was daily diminishing; half were Greeks under their Metropolitan, and the remainder Turks, with the exception of a few Franks at Larnaka. A Mntesellini, appointed by the Captain Pasha, ruled the isle, and next in authority to him were the Archbishop and Dragoman (the latter a Greek nominated bj' the Porte), charged with the affaire of the Rayahs, and responsible for their contributions. As those functionaries played into each others hands, no division of the Empire was moro heavily taxed; and the peasants, reduced to total indigence, embraced opportunities of expatriating themselves. The most fertile and agreeable region is near the old Paphos, where flourish fine forests of oak, beech and pine with groves of olive and mulberry trees. Cyprus is renowned for the quantity of its fruit, wine, oil aud silk : it abounds in oxen, sheep, fowls and game, and the natives boast that the produce of every soil aud climate will not only flourish there, but attain to the highest perfection. Its trade is earned on at larnaka, a town of 5000 souls, built on the site of Citium, at tho bottom of a deep bay, making an excellent roadstead. Nicosia, the capital, is an inland and more populous city : Famagosta, on the East coast, once a strong place, is now dismantled and ruinons. The military force consisted of 300 guards of the Mutesellim and 4000 Janissaries, badly armed, and without discipline or courage. The character of the people is mild, and it is said that few instances of cruelty occurred, and that the Mussulmans lived on a very amicable footing with their Rayahs. 45ί{ EXCERPTA CYPRIA.

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