Cyprus

abbeys; yet its mountain ranges would seem to connect it with Syria and its open plains with Egypt. Of all the ruins of the age of chivalry, that of the castle of Buffavento, "the defier of stor

rning of the 24th of April I rode forth followed by my dragoman, zaptieh, and other servants, to visit this interesting ruin, the foot of the mountain on which it stands being about four leagues from Nikosia. M

to proceed, and went on our way rejoicing. Our road now lay through the broad and fruitful plain of Messaria: golden corn was waving in the breeze,

fields and pastures till later in the day. The silence was so intense as to be almost painful,

, who calmly smoked his pipe, keeping his eye on his family meanwhile, to see they did not shirk their work, which consisted of lopping off the ears of corn with a small sickle-mere child's play. As we approached the old man shouted out something to his better halves, and one of them, a negress, immediately threw part of her garment over her face, and turned away. With the other three, however, curiosity overcame their bashfulness, and their veils we

e crests of this range display every form of rocky beauty, and its peaks, chasms, precipices, and bold bluffs are covered in some parts with tints of reddish brown, and in others with a purplish blue mist that gives them an indescribab

we heard from time to time the tinkle of the bells of the sheep and goats browsing down below. Two old monks stood at the door to bid us welcome, and insist upon our dismounting and accepting their hospitality. These appeared to be the only inhabitants of the half-ruined pile. I have since learnt that the number of monks is steadily decreasing in all the monasteries of Cyprus. In the cloister garden

a country where the monasteries are the only houses of entertainment that are always open. As soon as my hosts learnt I was a Bavarian, they informed me that the celebrated Maria of Molino was the foundress of their monastery, and a Bavarian by birth. I think the simple-hearted creatures had a sort of vague idea that she must have been an ancestress of my own. Dinner over, I seated myself in a cool corne

cured of their fearful disease. This pilgrimage is now never undertaken, either because the water is not as abundant as in days gone by, or because happily this hideous malady is comparatively rare. During my stay in Cyprus I did not see one leper except outside Nikosia. This same Mary of Molino, whose bones lie in these mountains, according to another tradition, built the castle of Buffavento, choosing this elevated situation, we may suppose, to remove herself entirely from the haunts of men. If she executed such an undertaking, she must have enjoyed the revenues of a princess. Looking up at this grand old pile one is struck by its strength and size, and when, on closer survey, one finds that two similar fortresses are situated on the same chain of mountains, at about four leagues right and left of Buffavento, called respectively Kantara and St. Hilarion, that these castles command the mountain passes and the roads to the city of Keryneia, and that this town had the be