go HISTORY OF ART IN PHOENICIA AND ITS DEPENDENCIES. leaves and stem are covered with bristles, from the ends of which a kind of resin distils, to thicken in the air and hang suspended in viscid drops. The island can show other trees which give off gums more or less valued for their perfume or taste ; besides the terebinth there is the liquidambar orientalis, the wood of Christ, as they call it in the Greek islands, which furnishes a kind of incense, the ambra. And in its bosom Cyprus held treasures which contributed no less to its wealth and reputation. When the Phoenicians first landed on its shores they recognised deposits of copper, which turned out to be rich enough to bear working down to the Roman epoch. 1 They also found iron, but in smaller quantities ; alum, amianthus, and precious stones of various kinds. In those remote years which saw the first landing of Phoenicians, copper was the most indispensable of all metals, and Cyprian copper was more famous than any other ; both Greek and Latin writers speak of XaX/cos tcvTrpios and ces cyprium. The Latins went still farther ; they gave the metal the very name of the island in which it abounded, and called it cuprum, whence our copper and its equivalent terms in other European languages. The mines of Cyprus have long been abandoned, but their vestiges are still to be traced at several points. The geological exploration which, we are told, is about to be undertaken by the English government, ought at least to afford precise information on the subject, and may even lead to the discovery of veins which might again be profitably worked. 2. Summary of the History of Cyprus. As we have already had occasion to mention, the soil of Cyprus was occupied for many centuries by a population composed both of Semites and Aryans, and, whoever the primitive inhabitants of the island may have been, the earliest settlers known to 1 In the Odyssey (i. 181) Athene, who has put on the form of a merchant, relates how she intends to carry iron to the Cypriot town of Temese, hoping to exchange it for copper. Later on we find the petty kings of the island turning to these deposits when they wished to make presents or to secure useful alliances. Between 331 and 332, Nicocreon, a king of Cyprus, sends to Greece a present of copper for the winners in the Argolide games (Le BAS et FOUCART, Voyage archeologique, Inscrip- tions du Peloponhe, No. 122. KAIBEL, Epigrammata graca, No. 846).
