secure me from the melancholy catastrophes that had terminated these hitherto-unsuccessful attempts.
On the 16th, at dawn of day, I saw a high hill, which, from its particular form, described by Strabo[1], I took for Mount Olympus[2]. Soon after, the rest of the island, which seemed low, appeared in view. We scarce saw Lernica till we anchored before it. It is built of white clay, of the same colour as the ground, precisely as is the case with Damascus, so that you cannot, till close to it, distinguish the houses from the earth they stand upon.
It is very remarkable that Cyprus was so long undiscovered[3]; ships had been used in the Mediterranean 1700 years before Christ; yet, though only a day's sailing from the continent of Asia on the north and east, and little more from that of Africa on the south, it was not known at the building of Tyre, a little before the Trojan war, that is 500 years after ships had been passing to and fro in the seas around it.
It was, at its discovery, thick covered with wood; and what leads me to believe it was not well known, even so late as the building of Solomon's Temple, is, that we do not find that Hiram king of Tyre, just in its neighbourhood, ever had recourse to it for wood, though surely the carriage would have been easier than to have brought it down from the top of Mount Libanus.
