The great advantages of the East India trade, which was then carried on by the Red Sea, preserved Alexandria through several revolutions; but having fallen under the dominion of the Turks, and the passage round the Cape of Good Hope being discovered, a fatal blow was given to its commerce, and it has since fallen to decay. It is, however, even now, worth the attention of the classical traveller. Entering the harbour, we passed by the Island of Pharos, where Ptolemy built the enormous Tower which was once the wonder of the world; and, when riding within the port, nothing could be more gratifying than to see from thence that mixture of ancient and modern monuments that presented themselves to the view, on which ever side the eye could be turned.
Of myriads of antiquities which this place affords for the inspection of the curious, I shall mention only two——One, the Column of Pompey, on viewing of which, the remembrance of that great and good man’s most unmerited and cruel fate extracted a sigh from the bottom of my heart: this pillar engages the attention of all travellers; it is composed of red granite; the capital is Corinthian, with palm leaves, and not indented; the shaft and the upper member of the base are of one piece, ninety feet long, and nine in diameter; the base, a square of fifteen feet on each side; the whole column is one hundred and fourteen feet high, perfectly well polished, and only a little shivered on the Eastern side. Nothing can equal the majesty of this monument: seen from a distance, it overtops the town, and serves as a signal for vessels; approaching it nearer, it produces an astonishment mixed with awe: one would never be tired of admiring the beauty of the capital, the length of the shaft, nor the extraordinary simplicity of the pedestal. Some years ago, a party of English seamen contrived, by flying a kite, to draw a line over the pillar, and by that means made a kind of a shroud, by which they got up, and on the very top of of it drank a bowl of punch, to the utter astonishment of a multitude who came to see them; they broke off one of the volutes of the column, but amply compensated for this mischief by a discovery they made, as, without their evidence, the world would not have known, at this hour, that there was originally a statue on this column, one foot and ancle, of which, of enormous size, are still remaining.——The other is the Obelisk of Cleopatra, of immense size, and of one single piece of granite marble. Here I observed, too, a thick wall, with towers mouldering under extreme age, which contained, in its face, fragments of architecture of the most exquisite workmanship, such as broken columns, friezes, &c.; those were the antique ruins of some fallen pieces of antiquity, at the time that this antique wall was built: what, then, must be the length of time since they had first undergone the hands of the workman? These circumstances tend to demonstrate, that, far back beyond the reach of our calculation, the Arts flourished: and when one thinks of the miraculous masses of work done in former ages——the magnitude of the pieces of which those works were composed, such as whole columns and obelisks of a single block of marble——the Colossus of Rhodes, made of brass, one foot of which was placed on one side of the harbour, and another on the other side, so that ships passed between its legs——we cannot help yielding up the palm to the Ancients for stupendous magnificence, however we may surpass them for the useful, the elegant and the good.
At Alexandria I remained about twelve days, till, wearied of the confined state I lived in on account of the plague, I resolved to devise some means, if possible, to get away, and at length hired a boat to carry me to the island of Cyprus, from whence I concluded, that I should find no sort of difficulty in procuring a conveyance to Latichea, and so proceed by my first intended route. I accordingly arrived at Cyprus in perfect safety, where, to my great sorrow and astonishment, I found that an epidemical fever, equal in its effects to a plague, prevailed: however, there was no alternative; I must run the risque, and I dismissed the boat that carried me from Alexandria.
Although the etymologies of the names of places are of very little importance, and most frequently uncertain, I think it probable that the Learned are right, who assert the name of this is derived from Κυπρος (Cyprus) or Cypress——with which shrubs the island abounds. It had, in ancient times, a number of other names——one of which was Paphia, whence Venus, who was worshipped in it, was called the Paphian Goddess. It lies thirty miles West of Syria, whither I was bound, stretching from the South-west to the North-east, one hundred and fifty miles in length, and seventy in breadth in the widest part of it.
This island holds a very high rank in classic lore——It gave birth to some great Philosophers and considerable Poets——The Apostle Barnabas was a native of it, and, assisted by St. Paul, first introduced Christianity among them. Famagusta, a town on the Eastern part of the island, opposite to the shore of Syria, is the ancient Salamis, built by Teucer the son of Telamon, and brother of Ajax.
Symisso, on the South-east, the best port in Cyprus, is the Amathus mentioned by Virgil in his Æneid, and by Ovid in his Metamorphoses. And Baffo, on the Western coast, is the Παφος (Paphos) of antiquity, famous for the Temple of Venus.
As the branches of an Empire most remote from the great feat of Government are always more despotically governed than those nearer the source of redress, Cyprus has been continually ruled with a rod of iron since it came into the hands of the Turks. While it was under the dominion of Christians, it was well-peopled, having no less than eight hundred or a thousand villages in it, besides several handsome cities; but the Turks have spread ruin and desolation over the country, and it is now so thinly inhabited that more than half the lands lie uncultivated.
The air of this island is now for the most part unwholesome, owing to the damps arising from the many fens and marshes with which the country abounds——while, there being but few springs or rivers in the island, the want of a plentiful fall of rain, at proper periods, distresses the inhabitants very much in another way; and by means of the uncultivated state of the country, they are greatly infested with poisonous reptiles of various kinds.
The most remarkable mountain in Cyprus is called Olympus——a name common to several other mountains in Greece, particularly to that in Thessaly, so famous in the poetry of the Ancients. That in Cyprus is about fifty miles in circumference: great part of it is covered with woods; and at the foot of it are fine vineyards, which produce admirable wine, not only in a sufficiency for their own consumption, but some also for exportation——And although the greater part of the island lies uncultivated, as I have before observed, it produces a sufficient quantity of corn, unless in seasons when their harvest fails, in which case the people are easily supplied from the continent. They have, besides, cattle enough for their own consumption——Many parts of the country abound with wild-fowl, and several sorts of game, and they have plenty of fish upon the sea coasts.
The trade of Cyprus is not inconsiderable, and carried on chiefly by Jews and Armenians: the commodities in which they deal are wine, oil, cotton, wool, salt, silk, and turpentine——besides, it produces several sorts of earth, fit for the use of painters, particularly red, black and yellow.