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A BIDE IN SPBINO TIME of a mediaeval Cyprian noble, in which the feudal fortress had softened into an Oriental pleasure-house. Its original lords, in common with the whole Western noblesse, had long since wholly disappeared out of the island. Since then the building had been a monastery ; at the present moment it was a farm ; and though some parts of it were gone, much of it was in good preservation. Such was the in-formation I was able to give to Mr. Guillaume when, at the hour appointed, our mules—we were to ride on mules—assembled at Captain Scott's door, and thrilled the street with excitement. We had two muleteers, two servants, and a zaptieh, or mounted gendarme, whom Captain Scott sent with us. I forget why or how it was supposed he might be of use to us, but he at all events gave our cavalcade such an air of dignity that the street boys cheered us as we started as if we had been a coach and four. Our road lay over a perfectly flat country, some of which was grassy like an English common, some ploughed like fields in Essex or Lincolnshire, and some a waste covered with bog-myrtle and boulders. The first special feature that caught my eye in the landscape was the presence of several churches, evidently long abandoned, standing on the plain amidst the plough-land, with no habitation near them. There were three of them in a single field, as lonely as three crows. I took them to be one of the many indications remaining, of how densely the coun-

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