May 23d.

To-day our organs of vision had a rest, for we were sailing on the high seas.  Late in the evening, however, the sailors descried the mountains of Cyprus looming in the far distance like a misty cloud.  With my less practised eyes I could see nothing but the sunset at sea—­a phenomenon of which I had had a more exalted conception.  The rising and setting of the sun at sea is not nearly so striking a spectacle as the same phenomenon in a rocky landscape.  At sea the sky is generally cloudless in the evening, and the sun gradually sinks, without refraction of rays or prismatic play of colours, into its ocean-bed, to pursue its unchanging course the next day.  How infinitely more grand is this spectacle when seen from the “Rigi Kulm” in Switzerland!  There it is really a spectacle, in contemplating which we feel impelled to fall on our knees in speechless adoration, and admire the wisdom of the Almighty in his wondrous works.

May 24th.

On mounting to the deck this morning at five o’clock I could distinguish the island of Cyprus, which looks uglier the nearer we approach.  Both the foreground and the mountain-peaks have an uncomfortable barren air.  At ten o’clock we entered the harbour of Larnaka.  The situation of this town is any thing but fine; the country looks like an Arabian desert, and a few unfruitful date-palms rise beside the roofless stone houses.

I should not have gone on shore at all, if Doctor Faaslanc, whose acquaintance I had made at Constantinople, and who had been appointed quarantine physician here four weeks before my departure, had not come to fetch me.  The streets of Larnaka are unpaved, so that we were obliged literally to wade more than ankle-deep in sand and dust.  The houses are small, with irregular windows, sometimes high and sometimes low, furnished with wooden grated shutters; and the roofs are in the form of terraces.  This style of building I found to be universal throughout Syria.

Of a garden or a green place not a trace was to be seen.  The sandy expanse reaches to the foot of the mountains, which viewed from this direction form an equally barren picture.  Behind these mountains the appearance of the landscape is said to be very fruitful; but I did not penetrate into the interior, nor did I go to Nikosia, the capital of the island, distant some twelve miles from Larnaka.

Doctor Faaslanc took me to his house, which had an appearance of greater comfort than I had expected to find, for it consisted of two spacious rooms which might almost have been termed halls.  An agreeable coolness reigned every where.

Neither stoves nor chimneys were to be seen, as winter is here replaced by a very mild rainy season.  The heat in summer is often said to be insupportable, the temperature rising to more than 36 degrees Reaumur.  To-day it reached 30 degrees in the sun.