A few words must, however, be said respecting Cyprus.  This island, which is 140 miles long from Bafa (Paphos) to Cape Andrea, with an average width for two thirds of its length of thirty-five, and for the remaining third of about six or seven miles, is a mountainous tract, picturesque and varied, containing numerous slopes, and a few plains, well fitted for cultivation.  According to Eratosthenes it was in the more ancient times richly wooded, but was gradually cleared by human labor.  Its soil was productive, and particularly well suited for the vine and the olive.  It grew also sufficient corn for its own use.  But its special value arose from its mineral products.  The copper mines near Tamasus were enormously productive, and the ore thence derived so preponderated over all other supplies that the later Romans came to use the word Cyprium for the metal generally—­whence the names by which it is even now known in most of the languages of modern Europe.  On the whole Cyprus was considered inferior to no known island.  Besides its vegetable and mineral products, it furnished a large number of excellent sailors to the Persian fleet.

It remains to notice briefly those provinces of the south-west which had not been included within any of the preceding monarchies, and which are therefore as yet undescribed in these volumes.  These provinces are the African, and may be best considered under the three heads of Egypt, Libya, and the Cyrenaica.

Egypt, if we include under the name not merely the Nile valley and the Delta, but the entire tract interposed between the Libyan Desert on the one side and the Arabian Gulf or Red Sea on the other, is a country of nearly the size of Italy.  It measures 520 miles from Elephantine to the Mediterranean, and has an average width of 150 or 160 miles.  It must thus contain an area of about 80,000 square miles.  Of this space, however, at least three fourths is valueless, consisting of bare rocky mountain or dry sandy plain.  It is only along the course of the narrow valley in which the Nile flows from the Cataracts to beyond Cairo, in the tract known as the Faioum, and in the broad region of the Delta, that cultivation is possible.  Even in the Delta itself there are large spaces which are arid, and others which are permanent marshes, so that considerable portions of its surface are unfitted for husbandry.  But if the quantity of cultivable land is thus limited in Egypt, the quality is so excellent, in consequence of the alluvial character of the soil, that the country was always in ancient times a sort of granary of the world.  The noble river, bringing annually a fresh deposit of the richest soil, and furnishing a supply of water, which is sufficient, if carefully husbanded, to produce a succession of luxuriant crops throughout the year, makes Egypt—­what it is even at the present day—­one of the most fertile portions of the earth’s surface—­a land of varied products, all excellent—­but especially a land of corn, to which the principal nations of the world looked for their supplies, either regularly, or at any rate in times of difficulty.