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NEWS ABOUT ASIA MINOR 221 summer cloud. Experiences like these are always fresh to look back upon ; one takes them away with one not dead but living; and memory, when it broods over them, is like the air of spring, every time opening new flowers. It was five o'clock when I reached Mr. St. John's house again. The family were at tea in a room scented with violets ; and there was present an after-noon caller, whose personality and conversation at once surprised and interested me. He was a man of forty or so, the owner of a fine estate in Scotland, who had taken a fancy to buy himself some land in Cyprus—a considerable area, not far from Kyrenia. He had built himself a hermitage on it, consisting of a few rooms only ; and he spent there four months each year, amusing himself with what he hoped were improvements. For these he wanted a large amount of stone ; and it was in connection with this want that the interest of his conversation re-vealed itself. He told me that he had taken the advice of several natives as to how stone for build-ing could be procured most easily ; and the advice given him had in every case been as follows—to buy house-property on the Asian coast opposite, to pull down the houses, and ship the stones to Kyrenia. It appeared that what his advisers meant was this—that on the coast opposite there were ancient Eoman towns, desolate as Pompeii, but apparently less dilapidated ; that the ruins could be bought for a song, and, though fit for

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