arbor, but
moored in the midst of a vast, desolate ocean? Once in a weary while of
thirty days another ship passes and throws some mailbags on board, and
whilst we stretch out clamorous hands and cry for fuller tidings, for more
news, the vessel has passed out of our reach, and we are absolutely alone
once more. It is the strangest sensation, and I do not think one can ever
get reconciled to it. True, there is a great deal of talk just now about a
connecting cable which is some day to join us by electric wires to the
centres of civilization; but no telegraphic message can ever make up for
letters, and it will always be too costly for private use except on great
emergencies. Strange to say, the mercantile community, which is a very
influential one here, objects strongly to proposals of either telegraphic
or increased postal communication. They have no doubt good reasons for
their opinion, but I think if their pretty little children were on the
other side of the world, instead of close at hand, they would agree with
me that it is very hard to wait for four weeks between the mails.

AN ADVENTURE IN CYPRUS

"So this is Cyprus?" cries my English companion, Mr. James P----, turning
his glass with a critical air upon the glorious panorama that lies
outspread before us in all the splendor of the June sunrise. "Well, upon
my word, it's not so bad, after all!"

Such a landscape, however, merits far higher praise than this thoroughly
English commendation. To the right surge up against the bright morning
sky, wave beyond wave, an endless succession of green sunny slopes which
might pass for the "Delectable Mountains" of Bunyan. To the left cluster
the vineyards which have supplied for nineteen centuries the far-famed
"wine of Cyprus." In front extends a wide sweep of smooth white sand,
ending on one side in a bold rocky ridge, and on the other in the tall
white houses and straggling streets and painted church-towers and gilded
cupolas of the quaint old town of Larnaka, which, outlined against a
shadowy background of purple hills, appears to us as just it did to Coeur
de Lion and his warriors when they landed here seven hundred years ago on
their way to the fatal crusade from which so few of them were to
return.[A] And all around, a fit frame for such a picture, extend the blue
sparkling sea and the warm, dreamy, voluptuous summer sky.

"Wasn't it here that Fortunatus used to live?" says P----. "I wish I could
find his pu