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uses Google technology and indexes
only and selectively internet - libraries
having books with free public access |
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MALLOCK W.
In an enchanted island
page 39 View PDF version of this page In some ways tliey played delightfully, as if full of the spirit of the early, adventurous hour. But along with this elation I was conscious of a rising anxiety as to what was going to happen to me before the day was over. I was, on arriving, to be the guest of the Chief Secretary, who lived in Nicosia, the im-memorial seat of government ; and so far as kindness went I was sure of a kind welcome : but as I neared the island I began to realise keenly how very little I, after all, knew about it, and to ask myself if in coming to it I had not been a fool for my pains.
As an island of the imagination in the world of fable and history I could have recited a roll of mag-nificent names connected with it—antique Egypt and Hellas, luxurious Borne, Byzantium, and crusading Europe ; or, again, Adonis, who was wooed on its sloping hillsides ; Balaam and Ezekiel, who sang of its power and riches ; Solomon and Alexander the Great, St. Paul and St. George the dragon-slayer, Catharine Cornaro of Venice, and the conquering Sultan Selim. The mere catalogue would have come to the ear like a passage out of ' Paradise Lost.' But as for the dates and details which underlay all these associations, my knowledge, I now found, was forlornly less than fragmentary. And what sort of present remained after all this past ? My knowledge of this was more inappreciable still. Six weeks ago I was not even aware of the existence of the city in which I should sleep that night—this obscure capital, Nicosia, hidden away far inland, and full, as I had learnt already, of
JxV AN ENCHANTED ISLAND
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