Such Roads May Be Constructed For About 350 Pounds Per Mile At The Low Rate Of Labour In Cyprus, Considering The Presence Of Stone Throughout The District, And Their Completion Will Open The Entire Plain Of Messaria To Wheeled Communication With Four Ports, To North And South.

CHAPTER IV.

THE MESSARIA.

Having passed a week with our kind hosts, Sir Garnet and Lady Wolseley, at Government House, which formed a most agreeable contrast to the friendless life that we had been leading, the vans once more started en route for Kythrea, Famagousta, and the Carpas district. I had hired a good, sure-footed pony for my wife and a powerful mule for myself, and, having given the vans a start of several hours, we followed in the afternoon.

The treeless expanse of the Messaria produces nothing but cereals and cotton; teams of oxen were at work in all directions ploughing, and otherwise preparing the thistle-covered surface, and the atmosphere was so delusively clear that Kythrea, twelve miles distant, appeared close to us. Upon these boundless flats an object may be seen as distinctly as though upon the water, and we soon descried in the far distance a dark spot, which the binocular glass, if at sea, would have pronounced to be the stern of a vessel that had lost her masts, keeping the same course as ourselves; this was the gipsy-van, which should have already arrived at Kythrea, where I had expected to have found the camp arranged, dinner cooked, and everything ready for our reception. Something had happened, as the other van was not in sight.

It was impossible to dignify the route by the name of a "road," as it presented an uneven surface and occasionally branched into several independent tracks, which re-united after an eccentric course of a few hundred yards; these were caused by droves of mules which in wet weather had endeavoured to select a better line than the deeply-trodden mud in the central road. Fortunately the surface was now hard, and we cantered on, fully expecting some disaster to at least one of our vehicles. Upon our arrival we found a crowd of people yelling and shouting their utmost, while they were engaged in company with four oxen harnessed in dragging and pushing the blue van up a new road which they had scarped out of the precipitous bank of a river about forty feet deep; this accounted for only one van being in sight, as the other was in the dry bed of the river. These good people had been working for several hours in making a road where none existed; and assured me that the large bridge over the Pedias was unsafe for so great a weight, and therefore it was advisable to cross at the present spot. The banks consisted of the alluvium of ages free from stones, therefore it was easy to cut an incline; but as many tons of earth had been removed, the operation had required much labour, and many hands had collected from the adjacent villages upon seeing the dilemma.

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