Nothing could be more agreeable to me than that sight, and the reasoning upon it. I already, with pleasure, anticipated the time in which I should be a spectator first, afterwards historian, of this phænomenon, hitherto a mystery through all ages. I exulted in the measures I had taken, which I flattered myself, from having been digested with greater confederation than those adopted by others, would secure me from the melancholy catastrophes that had terminated these hitherto-unsuccessful attempts.
On the 16th, at dawn of day, I saw a high hill, which, from its particular form, described by Strabo[50], I took for Mount Olympus[51]. Soon after, the rest of the island, which seemed low, appeared in view. We scarce saw Lernica till we anchored before it. It is built of white clay, of the same colour as the ground, precisely as is the case with Damascus, so that you cannot, till close to it, distinguish the houses from the earth they stand upon.
It is very remarkable that Cyprus was so long undiscovered[52]; ships had been used in the Mediterranean 1700 years before Christ; yet, though only a day’s sailing from the continent of Asia on the north and east, and little more from that of Africa on the south, it was not known at the building of Tyre, a little before the Trojan war, that is 500 years after ships had been passing to and fro in the seas around it.
It was, at its discovery, thick covered with wood; and what leads me to believe it was not well known, even so late as the building of Solomon’s Temple, is, that we do not find that Hiram king of Tyre, just in its neighbourhood, ever had recourse to it for wood, though surely the carriage would have been easier than to have brought it down from the top of Mount Libanus.
That there was great abundance in it, we know from Eratosthenes[53], who tells us it was so overgrown that it could not be tilled; so that they first cut down the timber to be used in the furnaces for melting silver and copper; that after this they built fleets with it, and when they could not even destroy it this way, they gave liberty to all strangers to cut it down for whatever use they pleased; and not only so, but they gave them the property of the ground they cleared.
Things are sadly changed now. Wood is one of the wants of most parts of the island, which has not become more healthy by being cleared, as is ordinarily the case.
At [54]Cacamo (Acamas) on the west side of the island, the wood remains thick and impervious as at the first discovery. Large stags, and wild boars of a monstrous size, shelter themselves unmolested in these their native woods; and it depended only upon the portion of credulity that I was endowed with, that I did not believe that an elephant had, not many years ago, been seen alive there. Several families of Greeks declared it to me upon oath; nor were there wanting persons of that nation at Alexandria, who laboured to confirm the assertion. Had skeletons of that animal been there, I should have thought them antediluvian ones. I know none could have been at Cyprus, unless in the time of Darius Ochus, and I do not remember that there were elephants, even with him.
In passing, I would fain have gone ashore to see if there were any remains of the celebrated temple of Paphos; but a voyage, such as I was then embarked on, stood in need of vows to Hercules rather than to Venus, and the master, fearing to lose his passage, determined to proceed.
Many medals (scarce any of them good) are dug up in Cyprus; silver ones, of very excellent workmanship, are found near Paphos, of little value in the eyes of antiquarians, being chiefly of towns of the size of those found at Crete and Rhodes, and all the islands of the Archipelago. Intaglios there are some few, part in very excellent Greek style, and generally upon better stones than usual in the islands. I have seen some heads of Jupiter, remarkable for bushy hair and beard, that were of the most exquisite workmanship, worthy of any price. All the inhabitants of the island are subject to fevers, but more especially those in the neighbourhood of Paphos.
We left Lernica the 17th of June, about four o’clock in the afternoon. The day had been very cloudy, with a wind at N. E. which freshened as we got under weigh. Our master, a seaman of experience upon that coast, ran before it to the westward with all the sails he could set. Trusting to a sign that he saw, which he called a bank, resembling a dark cloud in the horizon, he guessed the wind was to be from that quarter the next day.