I Had Heard While At Kythrea That The Stones For The Very
Numerous Mills Of That Neighbourhood Were Supplied From Alexandretta,
And That None Of Native Origin Were Employed.
There can be no doubt that
some of the specimens I examined of this material combined the
requirements of extreme hardness, porosity, and sharpness of interior
edges around the honeycombed cavities.
I walked over the mountain, and
quickly lost the marl in masses of plutonic rocks that had been upheaved
and entirely occupied the surface. Although vast blocks lay heaped in
the wildest confusion, they exhibited the peculiar characteristics of
all Cyprian rocks (excepting the calcareous limestone) in their utter
want of compactness. I have never seen in Cyprus any hard rock (except
jurassic limestone), whether gneiss, syenite, or others, that would
yield an unblemished stone to the mason's chisel of ten feet in length
by a square of two feet. This peculiarity is not the result of decay,
but the entire mass has been fractured by volcanic disturbance and by
the rapid cooling of molten matter upheaved from beneath the sea.
Red jasper is abundant in this locality, and is generally found in small
pieces embedded in the marls. I discovered a very compact specimen
weighing about 200 lbs., which I left at a house in Caravastasi until I
might have an opportunity of conveying it to Larnaca. Upon crossing the
mountain I arrived at a charming valley among the hills at an elevation
of about 1200 feet above the sea, at the narrow entrance of which,
between the sides of the gorge, was a Turkish village.
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