They
Had Been Both Subjects Of A Bad Government, And It Was Not Their Fault
That They Were Despoilers.
You might as well blame the wind for the
destruction of venerable trees; or the locusts for devouring the crops;
they were ungoverned, and unfortunately the instinct of uncivilised man
is to destroy.
I shall say more upon this important subject when we
arrive among the last remaining forests of the Troodos mountains.
We rode onwards, always through the same wilderness of old tree-stems
hacked, and young trees that would be hacked; at length we saw on a
cleared space in the distance what I imagined to be a long brown rock
lying upon the surface; but upon riding out of the path to examine this
object I found it was a splendid trunk of a pine-tree more that two feet
in diameter. Why this had been spared for so many years I cannot say,
but its size suggested reflections upon the original forests that must
have covered the surface and have ornamented the once beautiful island
of Cyprus; now denuded, and shorn of every natural attraction.
I again became angry; visions of the past primaeval forests appeared
before me, all of which had been destroyed: and as formerly we hung a
man in England for cutting an oak sapling, I thought that the same cure
for timber-destroying propensities might save the few remaining forests
in this island. While indulging in this strain of unphilanthropic
thought we overtook another throng of wood-laden donkeys and their
proprietors:
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