At This Season The Carpas
District Possessed An Important Advantage In The Variety Of Wild
Vegetables Which Afforded Nourishment For Man And Beast; The Valleys
Teemed With Wild Artichokes And With A Variety Of Thistles, Whose
Succulent Stems Were A Favourite Food For Both Oxen And Camels.
The leaf-stems of the artichokes were peeled and eaten raw by the
inhabitants, but as these people are accustomed to consume all kinds of
uncooked vegetables and unripe fruits few civilised persons would
indulge in the Cypriote tastes.
We found the artichoke stems uneatable
in a raw state, but remarkably good when peeled and stewed, with a sauce
of yolk of egg beaten up with oil, salt, pepper, and lemon-juice; they
were then quite equal to sea-kale. There is a general neglect in the
cultivation of vegetables which I cannot understand, as agriculture is
the Cypriote's vocation; it can hardly be called laziness, as they are
most industrious in their fields, and expend an immense amount of labour
in erecting stone walls to retain a small amount of soil wherever the
water-wash from a higher elevation brings with it a deposit. The
insignificant terraces thus formed by earth caught in its descent while
in solution appear disproportioned to the labour of their construction,
and the laborious system would suggest an extreme scarcity of land
suitable for agricultural operations. I believe this to be the case, and
that a serious mistake has been made in assuming that the Crown
possesses large areas of land that may eventually become of great value.
There are government lands, doubtless, of considerable extent, but I
question their agricultural importance, and whenever the ordnance-map of
the island shall be completed a wild confusion will be discovered in the
discrepancy of title-deeds with the amount of land in possession of the
owners. I have, whilst shooting in the wild tracts of scrub-covered
hills and mountains, frequently emerged upon clearings of considerable
extent, where the natives have captured a fertile plot and cleared it
for cultivation, far away from the eyes of all authorities.
I believe that squatting has been carried on for many years, as during
the Turkish administration a trifling annual present would have closed
the eyes of the never-too-zealous official who by such an oversight
could annually improve his pay. Land suitable for cultivation cannot
possibly be in excess of the demand, when plots of only a few yards
square are carefully formed by the erection of stone walls to retain the
torrent-collected soil.
We were pestered with beggars throughout this district, and even the
blind saw their opportunity; their number was distressing, and they
could not account in any way for the prevalence of ophthalmia. Some
endeavoured to explain the cause by referring it to the bright
reflection from the sea, to which they were so frequently exposed; I
assured them that sailors were seldom blind, and they proved the rule.
Dirty habits, dwellings unwashed, heaps of filth lying around their
houses and rotting in their streets, all of which during the hot dry
summer is converted into poisonous dust, and, driven by the wind, fills
the eyes, which are seldom cleansed--these are the natural causes which
result in ophthalmia.
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