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.
 
 
 
 
uses Google technology and indexes only and selectively internet - libraries having books with free public access
 
  Previous Next  

MALLOCK W.
In an enchanted island
page 118

View PDF version of this page

PEACE THAT PASSES UNDERSTANDING 115 confused sadness. I little knew what sadness, of a very definite kind, had been near me all the while amongst that desolation and silence, and that I should see it face to face on the occasion of my second visit. And now that I have mentioned the Konak, the ramparts, the bazaar, and the cathedral, the tourist's sights of Nicosia have, I think, all been enumerated. But the other sights—sights that slowly showed themselves and gave the place its character by a series of delicate touches, each dependent for its force on its surroundings as much as on itself—these were innumerable, and can be described only by specimens. They were, in fact, not so much sights as experiences ; and every day yielded a fresh crop of them. One afternoon, for instance, in a street that was then strange to me I caught, through an open doorway, a glimpse of a long cloister. Slanting sunlight was coming in through its arches, together with some orange boughs and banana trees, out of an unseen garden. I ventured in, with the feeling of a timid trespasser. Directly within the entrance, dim in the vaulted shadow, was a door, surmounted by a mass of intricate carving. At each extremity of the device was a quaint heraldic lion, and in the middle I detected the heads and the wings of angels. I advanced into the cloister. The sleepy garden revealed itself, and on the other side a series of whitewashed cells, each with a bed, a chair, and a bare wooden ι 2

View PDF version of this page


  Previous First Next