Coffee and pipes were served, after which, it being now noon, the time of the first repast of the Orientals, we went to table. If a number of servants could constitute greatness, this prelate might vie with the first duke in England; for we had no fewer than twenty to wait at table, and I was told that he had fifty in the palace. The repast was what is called excellent in Turkey, but would seem strange to a European.
The archbishop received great reverence from his followers. No Greek sat down in his presence, except when commanded to do so. Such as entered the room prostrated themselves (which means that they bent forward until they touched the floor with their hands), and bared the head, a degree of servility which the Turks, their masters, have not exacted from them, proving that men, when tyrannized over, become themselves vile, and exercise the same or even more, tyranny towards their inferiors. The Englishman thinks he degrades himself when he kisses the pope’s toe; the Greek licks the very dust on which the archbishop walks. I say nothing of the archbishop’s privilege of signing his name with red ink, and of wearing the purple, so often mentioned by other travellers; or of his having two janissaries at his gate, which latter distinction is a concession made to him by the Turkish government, as head of the only recognized Christian church. Eastern enjoyment, or a priest’s idleness, was exemplified in the mode in which the archbishop washed his hands after dinner. The chair in which he sat was swung round by his attendants (grace having been said), and another arm-chair was brought, with the back between his knees, on the seat of which was placed a broad basin. The arms of the chair afforded support to his arms; and, whilst the water was poured on his hands, the back prevented the wet from falling on his clothes. His palace was roomy, but old and patched. Facing the palace was a handsome new building, that would do honour to any potentate in Europe. This was a college, founded from the funds of the church, for the instruction of youth, having professors of ancient and modern Greek, of Arabic, of Italian, and of church music. The exercises of some of the scholars were shown to me, and I listened with advantage to a lecture of one of the professors. One scholar, a student principally in Italian, had made a progress that was quite astonishing; and I read a very clever Italian composition, written by him in his capacity of secretary to the archbishop, the fruits of knowledge acquired in one year. The edifice consisted of a vestibule, from which branched two saloons, with sofas at the extremities and tables in the middle. Out of these saloons, to the left and right, were four apartments, making eight altogether, where the professors taught. The latter rooms had desks and benches for the pupils.
I visited, in the afternoon, the church of St. Sophia, converted into a mosque by the Turks when the Venetians lost Cyprus to them. The interior was lofty, consisting of a nave, supported by five massive Saxon-like pillars on either side. At the bottom was a semicircular window, where, as well as up the side aisles, the pillars were of less dimensions. There were several old carpets spread on the ground, one of which was very large.[105] The governor’s palace, whither I next went, was an irregular building, with a large courtyard, and a corridor round the first and upper story. Such private houses as I entered were commodious, spacious, and of great neatness.
The walls of the city were of considerable thickness, broad enough, on the ramparts, to admit two carriages abreast. They had bastions at small distances, faced with sunburnt bricks, whilst the curtains were faced with stone. The bastions probably had been repaired since the time of Pococke, for they no longer represented a semicircle, as he describes them, but were an imperfect triangle, with truncated corners. On the three bastions nearest to the Famagusta gate were eight or ten pieces of cannon. There were three gates—that of Paphos, that of Famagusta, and a third which I did not note down. Some embrasures of turf, very recently made, were observable, and were constructed probably during the time of a recent insurrection in Cyprus, to which I shall presently advert. In Leucosia the guard was set every night on the walls, and the watches were cried.
On Wednesday, the 30th, I went to see the lepers at the city gate. There were among them persons of both sexes and of all ages; some with the joints of the fingers gone, some with blotches, and all more or less deformed. Most of them were people of low birth, generally peasants; some were Moslems and some were Christians. The little information I obtained from them amounted to this; that those who lost the first joints of their hands had nails growing on the second; that the heat of a fire was invariably pernicious, visibly increasing their complaint; that sleep and appetite were not diminished generally by it; that hot water had not the same effect on them as the heat of a fire. One told me that, when first attacked in the fingers, he thought he saved them by having the actual cautery applied to both his arms. Another said he had been in the leper-house thirty-five years. Men and women lived promiscuously, but I could not learn whether any children had resulted from this intercourse. It may, however, here be observed, that there was a woman in the village of Abra who had lost the first phalanges of both hands by leprosy, yet this woman had a daughter, who was well-looking, healthy, and the mother of five most beautiful children, all free from every symptom of the grandmother’s complaint.
I spent the evening with the archbishop. The title of the prelate is μακάριοτάτος (most blessed.) His archimandrites was a man of peculiarly venerable appearance. But the most learned person that it was my fortune to see in Leucosia was Andreas, dragoman to the archbishop, whose business lay in transacting the affairs of government between the governor of the island and the archbishop. There were numerous baths in Leucosia.
I took leave of my host over-night, and, on the morning of the 31st January, prosecuted my journey for Cytherea, now called Cherki, the true situation of the ancient Cytherea being assigned to a spot one league south of Cherki. After riding half an hour, we passed the river Pedias, close to which was a small Turkish village, called Miamillia. The bed of the river was deep; for the soil through which it ran was loose and sandy, and easy to be washed away by a rapid stream. At that time, as the rains had ceased some days, the water that flowed was no more than a rivulet. The road was parallel to the chain of mountains, called (from a five-fingered inequality on the ridge which was on our left) Pentedactylus. In two hours’ time we reached Cytherea.
I had a letter of introduction to a farmer, named Petráki, the chief person in the village. Though a rustic, he had nevertheless a spacious house and six house-servants, always a serious consideration to the traveller, who, as he casts his eye over them, and marks the alacrity with which they run to serve him and neglect their master, is obliged to check his self-complacence, by the recollection that all this is but a larger draft on his purse when he departs. I ate some excellent pork, boiled down to a jelly and dressed with a sour sauce in the manner of the French. The female part of the family, although seen occasionally bustling about in the duties of the house, did not sit down to table with us.
Cytherea was a long, straggling village, producing a great quantity of cotton and oil, and making abundance of silk. The oil was esteemed the best in the island. From the foot of Mount Pentedactylus issued a copious spring, in a stream which, in its course, turned twenty-four mills, besides irrigating the grounds and orchards. My host told me that the delicious atmosphere of Cytherea brought on him frequent visits from the Turks of Leucosia, who came as often as two or three times a week to take the air, and were generally entertained at his expense. He expressed himself an ardent well-wisher to the cause of the Franks, and prayed for the moment when they would relieve Cyprus from the yoke of the Turks: but his prayers for the emancipation of the Greeks, I fear, were mercenary; for he said he should like to know whether any great changes threatened the Turkish empire, as, in that case, he might be spared the expence of a barattery, or license, which he was about to purchase.
A barattery was formerly a patent, which might be purchased from the Turkish government by Christian subjects. It cost 3000 piasters; and by it the purchaser was entitled to leave his property to his children, to wear certain coloured clothes and yellow shoes, and to some other privileges, not permitted to rayahs or unredeemed Greeks. It was the practice in the golden days of the European ambassadors at Constantinople to make a traffic of these baraterries; but the evil grew to such a height, that the Porte was obliged to interfere.