mediæval fortification left in the world. It can never be reproduced or reborn, since the time that bred it is dead. Now in our enlightened age, when we know the value of such relics, are the remains of the old city to be wantonly destroyed before our eyes? I trust that those in authority may answer with an emphatic "No."

In itself the scheme for clearing out the ancient harbour and making of Famagusta a port connected by railway with Nicosia is good. But the haven thus reconstructed, although old Sir John Mandeville, more regardless of the truth than usual even, declares that it was one of the first harbours of the sea in the world,1 can never be of great importance or competent to shelter liners and men-of-war. Also I imagine that it will be incapable of defence except by sea-power. Now at Limasol it is different. There, owing to the natural configuration of the shore, a harbour where fleets might ride could be made with two entrances far apart, and having seven or eight miles of high land between it and the ocean, so that in practice nothing could touch the vessels that lay within. The necessary dredging would of course cost a good deal, although the bottom to be acted upon is soft and kindly. Perhaps the total expenditure might mount up to a million and a half, or even two millions, the price of a few battle-ships. Battle-ships are superseded in a score of years; the harbour, with proper care, would remain for centuries. We need such a place in this part of the Mediterranean. Is not the question worth the serious care of the Admiralty and the nation?

1 In the same passage this king of travellers-and their tales-tells us that in Cyprus they "hunt with papyons," which are "somewhat larger than lions." The "papyons" are not quite imaginary, since cheetahs were used for sporting purposes in mediæval Cyprus. When Sir John goes on to add, however, that the inhabitants of Cyprus in search of coolness "make trenches in the earth about in the halls, deep to the knee, and pave them and when they will eat they go therein and sit there," we wonder if he was well informed. The preceding passage also, which unhappily cannot be quoted, makes us marvel even more.

CHAPTER XII

THE SIEGE AND SALAMIS

I COULD see but few changes in Famagusta since I visited it fourteen years ago. Trees have grown up round the tombs where the execrable and bloody Mustafa and some of his generals lie buried; also the Commissioner, Mr. Travers, has planted other trees in portions of the moat where they do not flourish very well owing to the stony nature of the subsoil. Moreover, a large fig-tree which I remember growing in the said moat has vanished-I recall that I myself found a Cyprian woman engaged in trying to cut it down, and frightened her away. Probably when we had departed, she returned and completed the task. Lastly, when I was here before the iron cannonballs fired into the city by the Turks three centuries since, still lay strewn all about the place as they had fallen. Now they have been collected into heaps, or vanished in this way or in that. Otherwise all is the same, except that Time has thrust his finger a little deeper into the crevices of the ruined buildings.

What a tragedy was the siege of Famagusta! Probably few of my readers, and of the British public at large not one in every hundred thousand, have even heard of that event. Yet if it happened to-day the whole world would ring with its horror and its fame. The Boer war that at present fills the newspapers and the mouths of men has, to this day of writing, cost us at the outside six thousand dead. At the siege of Famagusta, taking no account of those in the city, if I remember right for I quote from memory, more than

were consumed. There was nothing to eat but bread and beans, nothing to drink but vinegar and water, and this too soon failed!"

Then after between 140,000 and 170,000 cannonballs, many of which I have seen lying about to this day, had been fired into the city, and the Turks had suffered a loss of from thirty to fifty thousand men, at length the brave Bragadino negotiated an honourable surrender under the terms of which the defenders were to be given their arms, lives, and goods, " a safe-conduct to Candia under an escort of galleys," and the townsfolk the grace of staying "in their houses to enjoy what was their own, living like Christians without any molestation therefor."

Upon these terms peace was signed, and the soldiers. began to embark in the vessels provided for them. The next evening, or at any rate upon that of August the 5th, the Signor Bragadino, accompanied by about a dozen officers and attended by a guard of fifty men, according to Fra Angelo, and nearly two hundred according to Bishop Graziani, paid a visit to Mustafa who received him courteously and kindly, praising the valour of the defence. The visit concluded, they rose to take leave, whereupon Mustafa asked that the prisoners captured during the siege might be sent to him. Bragadino replied that he had no prisoners. Then the Turk, pretending to be astonished, shouted out, "They were then murdered during the truce," and bade his soldiers who stood ready to seize and bind the Christians.

Now it was that the brutal ruffian, Mustafa, showed himself in his true colours. The story is best told in the words of Mr. Cobham's translation of Fra Angelo Calepio, although Bishop Graziani's account as rendered by Midgley is almost as good.

"They were defenceless, for they were compelled to lay aside. their arms before entering the tent, and thus bound were led one by one into the open square before the tent, and cut to

pieces in Mustafa's presence. Then twice and thrice he made Signor Bragadino, who showed no sign of fear, stretch out his neck as though he would strike off his head, but spared his life and cut off his ears and nose, and as he lay on the ground Mustafa reviled him, cursing our Lord and saying, 'Where is now thy Christ that He doth not help thee?' The general made never an answer, but with lofty patience waited the end. Count Hercule Martinengo, one of the hostages, was also bound, but was hidden by one of Mustafa's eunuchs until his chief's fury was passed. He did not slay him, but doomed him, as long as his soul cleaved to his body, to continual death in life, making him his eunuch and slave, so that happy he had he died with the rest a martyr's death. There were three citizens in the tent, who were released, but the poor soldiers bound like so many lambs were hewed in pieces, with three hundred other Christians, who never dreamed of such gross perfidy, and impious savagery. The Christians who were already embarked were brutally robbed and thrown into chains.

"The second day after the murders, August 7th, Mustafa first entered the city. He caused Signor Tiepolo, Captain of Baffo, who was left in Signor Bragadino's room, to be hanged by the neck, as well as the commandant of the cavalry. On August 17th, a day of evil memory, being a Friday and their holiday, Signor Bragadino was led, full of wounds which had received no care, into the presence of Mustafa, on the batteries built against the city, and for all his weakness, was made to carry one basket full of earth up and another down, on each redoubt, and forced to kiss the ground when he passed before Mustafa. Then he was led to the shore, set in a slung seat, with a crown at his feet, and hoisted on the yard of the galley of the Captain of Rhodes, hung like a stork' in view of all the slaves and Christian soldiers in the port. Then this noble gentleman was led to the square, the drums beat, the trumpets sounded, and before a great crowd they stripped him, and made him sit amid every insult on the grating of the pillory. Then they stretched him on the ground and brutally flayed him alive. His saintly soul bore all with great firmness, patience, and faith a sign of wavering he commended himself to his Saviour, and when their steel reached his navel he gave back to his Maker his

with never

L

forty thousand of the attacking force alone perished beneath the walls.

This in brief was the tale as it is told by Fra Angelo Calepio of Cyprus, an eye-witness and a doctor in theology of the order of Preachers, and others. In the year 1570, according to Fra Angelo, the Sultan Selim was persuaded by his head mufti to undertake the enterprise of the conquest of Cyprus from the Venetians: "avarice, lust of fame, difference of religion, diabolic suggestion, divine permission, an unbounded appetite for new territory to be added to the Ottoman dominion, these were the remote causes for the conspiracy against Cyprus. A nearer cause was the wish of Selim, the Emperor of the Turks, to build a mosque and school." Cyprus was to furnish the revenues for this pious enterprise. Fra Angelo says also that the Sultan was influenced to the conquest of the island" from his fondness for its excellent wines and the beautiful falcons that are taken there."

A great army was collected and allowed, owing to the mismanagement of affairs by the Venetians and local authorities, to invest the inland capital of Nicosia. After a gallant defence by the untrained troops and inhabitants within, they took the town. It is curious to read to-day, that grim badinage such as has recently been practised by the Boers investing Ladysmith, was indulged in by the Turks at Nicosia. Thus they drove a donkey up the wrecked wall crying in mockery, "Don't hurt the poor ass, it can do you no harm," and shouted, "Surrender, for you are in a bad way."

The horrors that occurred when once the Turkish soldiers were inside Nicosia are too dreadful to dwell on. Here is a single example. Says Fra Angelo: "Among the slain were Lodovico Podochatoro and Lucretia Calepia, my mother, whose head they cut off on her servingmaid's lap. They tore infants in swaddling-clothes from their mothers' breasts, of whom I could baptize only one," and so forth. On the day following the sack the best-looking