We Had Passed Through Several Hundred Acres Of Open Ground That
Were As White From The Abundance Of Narcissus As An English Meadow Might
Be Yellow From The Presence Of Buttercups.
Our camp was pitched upon a small level plateau of rock, in the centre
of which was a well, cut completely through the stone from top to
bottom.
It appeared to be about twenty-five feet deep, but was devoid of
water and contained a considerable amount of rubbish. The people assured
me that a dead Greek lay beneath, as a few years ago some Turks had
killed one of their people and thrown him into the well; they had
concealed the body by stones and rubbish, and no further steps had been
taken in the matter. As a large crowd of children of both sexes were
sitting round us doing nothing but stare, I set them to work to clear
the surface ground from loose stones and to sweep the plateau clean with
boughs from the wild cypress. When this was finished I gave them a
scramble for several handfuls of copper coins upon the cleared area, to
impress them pleasantly upon their work of cleanliness; this new game
became very popular, and might be introduced by the British government
with a certainty of gaining the admiration of the Cypriotes, especially
during the collection of taxes; the latter being an Anglo-Turkish game
which is not yet sufficiently appreciated.
The women were of the same type that we had seen in other districts, but
they appeared sickly, and many of the children were extremely delicate.
There was the usual protuberance of the abdomen to which I have before
alluded; and I found upon examination of the children that an
enlargement of the spleen was a chronic complaint. This is due to
repeated attacks of ague. I drew the attention of the people to the so
general mistake in this island of selecting a site for their villages in
the most unhealthy localities. We were now camped upon a height about
eighty feet above the valley, which resembled a basin beneath our feet;
the village was on the lower level of this basin, and as near the level
of the sea as possible. In heavy rains the valley became a temporary
swamp, and it seemed unaccountable that human beings endowed with common
sense should have selected the low ground instead of the immediate
heights. The explanation was "that as the village was built of
mud-bricks, the houses had been erected as near as possible to the
source of the material, MUD!" to avoid the difficulty of carriage in the
absence of carts.
The people were as usual dressed in cotton stuffs of home manufacture,
and were ignorant of such a material as flannel; the children were only
half-clad, and shivering; their food was generally raw, comprising
olives, oil, onions, and wild vegetables, such as artichokes, wild
mustard, and a variety of trash that in England would only be regarded
as "weeds." There were some pretty intelligent little girls and boys;
some of these were chewing mastic gum, a white leathery substance which
they gathered from incisions in the bark of this common shrub.
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