|
|
|
|
|
|
![](/cyprusexplorer/includes/images/kolossi200x90.jpg) |
|
|
uses Google technology and indexes
only and selectively internet - libraries
having books with free public access |
|
![](/cyprusexplorer/includes/images/chirocit200x200.jpg) |
|
|
![](/cyprusexplorer/includes/images/kourion200x140.jpg) |
|
|
|
|
Previous | |
Next |
|
![](/_images/8x8.gif) |
MALLOCK W.
In an enchanted island
page 198 View PDF version of this page AT A QUEENS WINDOW 195
from the window, I examined the face of the rock. So broken and irregular was this that in many places the walls rested on arches flung across rifts and chasms. The masonry seemed like a chamois leap-ing from crag to crag, and the whole place for a moment or two was like one of those dreams which end with the sleeper falling from some frightful and unimaginable height. I felt that it must all give way and send me descending into space with it.
By-and-by Mrs. St. John said meditatively, ' What a work it must have been to build this ! It is supposed that the stones were brought up on the backs of camels, and the workmen must most of them have been slaves.' As she said this a host of thoughts and images, which had been long latent in my mind, now made their shapes visible. I bethought me of the little I knew of the castle's history—that it was founded in the twilight of early Byzantine times ; that it was an ancient stronghold in the days of Isaac Comnenus ; that at his orders it surrendered to Bichard Cœur de Lion ; that since then, as its architecture plainly showed, it had been enlarged and embellished by the kings of the House of Lusignan ; and that finally the Venetians had, for strategical reasons, destroyed its strength by shatter-ing its towers with gunpowder. Then came thoughts of what a life, during the days of its glory, had been lived in it, what a strange, hybrid civilisation had blossomed here in mid-air. I seemed to see on the turrets the banners of Western chivalry, with the lions
o2
View PDF version of this page
|
![](/_images/8x8.gif) |
|
Previous |
First |
Next |
|
|
|