From the day when Moses smote the rock in
the wilderness, and the stream gushed forth to the thirsty Israelites,
to the present hour, water, which is man's first necessity, will in
drought-smitten countries be hailed with more than usual reverence. The
devout Mussulman sinks a well and erects a fountain for the public good,
and his friends bury his body in the neighbourhood of his last act.
"Rest, weary pilgrim, rest and pray
For the kind soul of Sybil Grey,
Who built this Cross and Well."
Christian and Mahommedan, and all creeds and races, men and animals,
yield unanimously to the great want, which in a thirsty land alone will
bring the lion and the lamb to drink in the same stream. I have myself
seen in moonlight, animals of various and conflicting natures revelling
in the rest of nature's armistice, drinking in crowds at the solitary
pool; the only source of water in the desert.
The Cypriotes in their natural love of the marvellous insist upon the
mystery attached to the Kythrea springs, but they attach no importance
to the extensive subterranean water-stores of the Messaria plain, simply
because they do not see it issue from the ground: still the fact is
there, the water in vast quantities always exists, and were it tapped at
a higher level, it would flow (as it actually does in certain places),
and exhibit the same principle upon a much larger scale than the
romantic and picturesque mountain springs of Kythrea.
