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.
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