The Shed Was Carpeted
With Mats And Furnished Roughly With A Table And Chairs; Hat-Pegs Were
Suspended Around, Made
From the red-barked wood of the arbutus, simply
cut so that by inverting the branch with the stem attached
To a cord,
the twigs, cut at proper lengths, would form convenient hooks.
From this cool hermitage we looked down upon the dense foliage of
rounded mulberry-tops and the fruit-trees of the gardens within the
gorge, while exactly in our front, a hundred yards across the deep
ravine, was the rocky steep of the mountain side, densely clothed with
ilex and arbutus, until the still higher altitudes banished all
underwood, and the upper ranges of Troodos exhibited a surface of barren
rocks clothed with tall pines and cypress, 2000 feet above us.
By the time we had completed our permanent camp a certain degree of
improvement had taken place in the people, as well as in the actual
cleanliness of the locality. Everybody washed his, or her, face and
hands. The customs of the monks had so far reformed that the immediate
neighbourhood was no longer offensive. When strangers with mules arrived
the road was immediately swept, and upon Saturday evenings a general
embellishment took place in honour of the approaching Sunday. The young
clergy were remarkably good and active; they worked in my little garden
at a shilling a day, went on errands to Platraes and the camp at
Troodos, and made themselves generally useful for a most moderate
consideration.
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