of
them monastic faith still shining. In strange churches I studied,
behind gilded screens and icons, magnificent copies of the Gospels, and
read aloud to a sacristan this passage and that, asking him to read them
also, so that I might adjust my pronunciation to his. On one occasion,
from a height near Government House, I watched, if I may so express
myself, a celebrated icon in action--a jeweled portrait of the Madonna,
said to have been painted by St. Luke. On the plain below was the broad
bed of a river, dry from continued drought. Unanswered prayers for rain
had for some time been frequent and at last this miraculous relic had
been brought forth from its hiding place, as a charm which was bound to
effect what ordinary prayers could not, and was being carried along the
banks of the river by a black procession of monks, who were followed--so
it seemed to me--by half the population of the neighborhood. As these
companies drew nearer, I gradually distinguished outbursts of distant
shouting. I had arrived at the psychological moment. Far off, along
watercourses lately dry, a streak of light was advancing like the coils
of a silver snake. This was the river, which was actually coming down in
flood. Presently, with a rattle of pebbles, it was pouring by below me.
In less than an hour the portent died away, but left the memory of a new
miracle behind it.

The only thoroughly modern thing in Cyprus at the time of my own visit
was Government House, which is not in Nicosia, but outside it. It is
built wholly of wood, and was sent out from England--a mere series of
rooms surrounding a court, which was then marked out for a tennis
ground. There was only one steam engine in the island, and (needless to
say) no railway. These appliances not being there, nobody missed them. I
myself thought the absence of railways pleasant rather than otherwise,
and steam as an aid to industry was the last thing--so it seemed--that
the native population wished for. The Duke of Sutherland, it appeared,
had not very long ago thought of buying an estate in the southern part
of the island and applying all the methods of science to the cultivation
of early potatoes. He would, however, in order to insure success, have
had to buy from the neighboring peasants certain way leaves and water
rights, and for these they banded together to ask such preposterous
prices that the duke, as they half hoped he would do, abandoned an
enterprise by which they, then the