DOI Seite / Zitierlink:
https://doi.org/10.11588/diglit.9184#0175
( iS3 )
CHAPTER VI.
ancient cyprus.
The traveller who approaches Cyprus from the south-east,
and nears the port of Larnaca, can scarcely fail to be un-
favourably impressed by the bare and forlorn appearance
of a country almost entirely denuded of trees and brush-
wood, and in the summer months without vegetation.
Very different was probably the aspect which even this
least fertile side of the island presented three thousand
years ago to the Phoenician mariner starting on his
westward explorations. In those days vast forests and
thick underwood stretched down from the mountains to
the shore, offering the visitor the prospect of an inex-
haustible supply of the materials for ship building.
Very probably the need for wood and tar first attracted
the Sidonian sailors to the shores of Cyprus. If so, a
stronger attraction soon induced them to remain. In the
mountains of the island they found an endless supply of
that copper which, until the difficulties attending the
working of iron were overcome, was the chief of all the
means by which man established his dominion over the
earth, the beasts of the world, and his fellow-man. When,
further, we consider the position of Cyprus, lying right
over against the Syrian coast, we cannot doubt the truth of
the tradition that some of the earliest Phoenician colonies
were established in the island. Timidly, as their custom
was, the new-comers took their post beneath the long
CHAPTER VI.
ancient cyprus.
The traveller who approaches Cyprus from the south-east,
and nears the port of Larnaca, can scarcely fail to be un-
favourably impressed by the bare and forlorn appearance
of a country almost entirely denuded of trees and brush-
wood, and in the summer months without vegetation.
Very different was probably the aspect which even this
least fertile side of the island presented three thousand
years ago to the Phoenician mariner starting on his
westward explorations. In those days vast forests and
thick underwood stretched down from the mountains to
the shore, offering the visitor the prospect of an inex-
haustible supply of the materials for ship building.
Very probably the need for wood and tar first attracted
the Sidonian sailors to the shores of Cyprus. If so, a
stronger attraction soon induced them to remain. In the
mountains of the island they found an endless supply of
that copper which, until the difficulties attending the
working of iron were overcome, was the chief of all the
means by which man established his dominion over the
earth, the beasts of the world, and his fellow-man. When,
further, we consider the position of Cyprus, lying right
over against the Syrian coast, we cannot doubt the truth of
the tradition that some of the earliest Phoenician colonies
were established in the island. Timidly, as their custom
was, the new-comers took their post beneath the long