302
��DICESNOLA'S CYPRUS.
��Gen. Cesnola Consul at Cyprus. He ar- rived at his post of duty on Christmas Day of 1865. As the ship approached the shore of the island (for there were no wharves) the town of Larnica, his future residence, presented a most forbidding aspect. It looked the very picture of desolation; no sign of life, no vegetation anywhere visible except a few solitary palm trees. The island, viewed from the steamer, seemed to be a great cemetery of buried nations. Of course the com- merce of this island was very limited, and the duties of the Consul were given to the protection of American citizens and the vindication of American honor. He gave his time chiefly to intimate con- verse with the dead rather than the liv- ing. The Turkish rulers of the island were opposed to his plans. They thwart- ed his purposes in every possible way; but the General, by his dexterity, evaded their officials, by his sagacity outwitted their spies, and by his coolness defied their troops. He bought the territory he explored, and hired his own laborers, and succeeded in bringing away most of the valuable objects he disinterred.
We will now give a summary of there- suits of his labors. He discovered and examined the sites of twenty-eight an- cient towns and cities. He explored fif- teen ancient temples, sixty-five cities of the dead, sixty thousand nine hundred and thirty-two tombs. He also discov- ered six aqueducts. The number of val- uable articles taken from these localities was thirty-five thousand five hundred and seventy-three. Of these, five thousand were lost at sea, mostly duplicates, how- ever, so that the value of the general col- lection was not injured. Most of these treasures of art have been purchased by the Metropolitan Museum of Art in New York City. Gen. Cesnola gave the pre- ference to his adopted country, and sent them to the United States before foreign nations had time to make their decision to purchase. It is a constant source of regret by English and French antiquari- ans that these treasures were allowed to be brought to this country.
The treasures brought up from the sub- teiranean vaults of the temple of Curi- um, on the southwest portion of the is- land, were the most valuable and the
��most important ever discovered in an- cient ruins. Four chambers were ex- plored, three of them fourteen feet and six inches high, twenty-one feet wide and twenty-three feet long; the fourth was a little smaller. These chambers were filled with fine earth which had percolated from above. This earth was carried up to the surface, about thirty feet above. Three thousand basketfuls were removed in one month, leaving about eighteen inches of earth at the bot- tom. Here the treasures were found, after the hands had been dismissed. With one assistant, the General careful- ly examined the earth over every inch of the floors of the three large rooms. The first contained gold vessels and orna- ments of great value; the second con- tained silver; the third and fourth works of bronze, copper, iron and terra cotta. In the gold room was a pair of bracelets bearing the name of Eteandras, King of Paphos, who, in 672, B. C, paid tribute to Esarhaddon of Nineveh. These brace- lets are nearly half an inch in thickness, two feet long, perfectly flexible, and of the purest gold. How came these treas- ures of such immense value in these bur- ied vaults? They were probably the of- ferings of devotees and pilgrims to the sacred shrine above them. They exhibit works of art of different ages and na- tions, and probably required centuries fer their accumulation. We can account for their being strewn upon the floors of
these rock-hewn vaults only upon the supposition of their hasty concealment by priests when the city was sacked and the temple destroyed.
Gen. Cesnola's narrative of his adven- tures with the Turks upon the island and his fortunate escapes from the grasp of power is written with charming simplici- ty and beauty, and has all the interest of a first-class novel. The pictorial illus- trations render the book invaluable to the student. The work bears this dedi- cation :
TO MY DEAR FRIEND,
MR. HIRAM HITCHCOCK,
In token of a friendship of many years, which often called forth its tru- est tests; and it never failed.
— E. D. Sanborn.
�� �
