Round the World in Eighty Places
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Round The World In Eighty Places Compiled by J. L. Herrera Dedicated to: Jacquie and Arabella Brodrick Mother and Daughter Travellers … May and Clarke Gerber Mother and Son Travellers … And especially in Memory of Clarke who died 25 June 2010. And With Thanks to: Patrick and Nicci Herrera, Beth Bennett, Ken Herrera, Gail Vardy, Cheryl Perriman, and those kind people who donate interesting books to stalls and op-shops. Introduction After nine Writers’ Calendars, of sorts, I thought I would do a collection with a slight difference. These are little snippets from here and there around the world, mostly from places I haven’t been. I thought it would be a way to travel at virtually no cost to me and might bring me into contact with some fascinating places and, with luck, some equally fascinating moments in history. Some of the places, as you will discover, aren’t places to stay and drink the water but I did want a sense of variety. It is still a writers’ calendar but I have confined my chosen pieces from various writers to pieces which have a connection to PLACE … And I have usually given priority to writers whose writing imparts a strong sense of PLACE … They don’t really need any introducing so hop aboard the magic carpet —ooops! I think it could do with a quick vacuum— and enjoy the journey with me. J. L. Herrera Hobart 2016 My computer has played up endlessly with this file and despite my best efforts to get everything the way it was in the original there may still be infelicities. Clearly it didn’t appreciate the chance to travel without moving a cog. 2 ROUND THE WORLD IN EIGHTY PLACES January 1: Sir James Frazer Maria Edgeworth Haiti, Independence Day * * * * * “The island of Cyprus lies but one day’s sail from the coast of Syria. Indeed, on fine summer evenings its mountains may be descried looming low and dark against the red fires of sunset. With its rich mines of copper and its forest of firs and stately cedars, the island naturally attracted a commercial and maritime people like the Phoenicians; while the abundance of its corn, its wine, and its oil must have rendered it in their eyes a Land of Promise by comparison with the niggardly nature of their own rugged coast, hemmed in between the mountains and the sea. Accordingly they settled in Cyprus at a very early date and remained there long after the Greeks had also established themselves on its shores; for we know from inscriptions and coins that Phoenician kings reigned at Citium, the Chittim of the Hebrews, down to the time of Alexander the Great. Naturally the Semitic colonists brought their gods with them from the mother-land. They worshipped Baal of the Lebanon, who may well have been Adonis, and at Amathus on the south coast they instituted the rites of Adonis and Aphrodite, or rather Astarte. Here, as at Byblus, these rites resembled the Egyptian worship of Osiris so closely that some people even identified the Adonis of Amanthus with Osiris. “But the great seat of worship of Aphrodite and Adonis in Cyprus was Paphos on the south- western side of the island. Among the petty kingdoms into which Cyprus was divided from the earliest times until the end of the fourth century before our era Paphos must have ranked with the best. It is a land of hills and billowy ridges, diversified by fields and vineyards and intersected by rivers, which in the course of ages have carved for themselves beds of such tremendous depth that traveling in the interior is difficult and tedious. The lofty range of Mount Olympus (the modern Troodos), capped with snow the greater part of the year, screens Paphos from the northerly and easterly winds and cuts it off from the rest of the island. On the slopes of the range the last pine-woods of Cyprus linger, sheltering here and there monasteries in scenery not unworthy of the Apennines. The old city of Paphos occupied the summit of a hill about a mile from the sea; the newer city sprang up at the harbour some ten miles off. The sanctuary of Aphrodite at Old Paphos (the modern Kuklia) was one of the most celebrated shrines in the ancient world. According to Herodotus, it was founded by Phoenician colonists from Ascalon; but it is possible that a native goddess of fertility was worshipped on the spot before the arrival of the Phoenicians, and that the newcomers identified her with their own Baalath or Astarte, whom she may have closely resembled. If two deities were thus fused in one, we may suppose that they were both varieties of that great goddess of motherhood and fertility whose worship appears to have been spread all over Western Asia from a very early time. The supposition is confirmed as well by the archaic shape of her image as by the licentious character of her rites; for both that shape and those rites were shared by her with other Asiatic deities. Her image was simply a white cone or pyramid. In like manner, a cone was the emblem of Astarte at Byblus, of the native goddess whom the Greeks called Artemis at Perga in Pamphylia, and of the sun-god Heliogabalus at Emesa in Syria. Conical stones, which apparently served as idols, have also been found at Golgi in Cyprus, and in the Phoenician temples of Malta; and cones of sandstone came to light at the shrine of the ‘Mistress of Torquoise’ among the barren gills and frowning precipices of Sinai.” From The Golden Bough by James Frazer. “When we enquire who were the inhabitants found by the Egyptians when they conquered the 3 island, we are confronted by a difficult problem. In the Old Testament we find frequent references to Kittim, or Chittim, and the Jewish historian Josephus identifies this with the island of Cyprus. The ancient Phoenician settlement which played a great part in the subsequent history of Cyprus, and close to which was built the modern town of Larnaca, was called Citium, or Kitium, and the name survives to this day in the title of the bishop of the diocese. In the tenth chapter of Genesis we find Kittim mentioned as one of the sons of Javan. We are justified, therefore, in supposing that the race found in the island when the Egyptians invaded it in the fifteenth century were of Javanian, that is to say, of Ionian origin.” From Cyprus under British Rule by C. W. J. Orr. The New Testament also makes a mention of Paphos. Saul and Barnabas and John Mark arrive. “They went all the way across the island to Paphos, where they met a certain magician named Bar- Jesus, a Jew who claimed to be a prophet. He was a friend of the governor of the island, Sergius Paulus, who was an intelligent man. The governor called Barnabas and Saul before him because he wanted to hear the word of God. But they were opposed by the magician Elymas (that is his name in Greek), who tried to turn the governor away from the faith. Then Saul—also known as Paul—was filled with the Holy Spirit; he looked straight at the magician and said, “You son of the Devil! You are the enemy of everything that is good. You are full of all kinds of evil tricks, and you always keep trying to turn the Lord’s truths into lies! The Lord’s hand will come down on you now; you will be blind and will not see the light of day for a time.” At once Elymas felt a dark mist cover his eyes, and he walked about trying to find someone to lead him by the hand. When the governor saw what had happened, he believed; for he was greatly amazed at the teaching about the Lord.” From Acts, Chapter 13. Clearly Paul had not heard of ‘political correctness’ but it is interesting that Paphos undoubtedly was an important place at that time. “How different from the paradise of Corfu is Cyprus: an island which always disappoints me, even in the legendary promise of its own name and of that of the city of Famagusta, of which the sound is so strangely lovely, though when you visit it you find it to be an undistinguished Cotswold village which has been whitewashed. I must admit, though, the beauty of its floral displays, especially of two, one when the fields are full of anemone fulgens, bright scarlet with charcoal-dusted centres – the other, on the borders of the streams flowing from the mountains, which in February are a mist of light pink, tawny and beige tamarisk in flower. Another delight in Cyprus is to watch the parties of Turkish men and women and children, escorting down to the port of Ktima a fellow-religionist due to embark on his pilgrimage to Mecca: and what a feast of sherbet and sticky, gelatinous Turkish sweets would follow on his departure! Sometimes it would take place at an open-air café, sometimes on a mound in the open air nearby. Turbaned men and veiled women, would sit there, side by side, overlooking the shore, munching their heavily powdered and glutinous lollipops. Below them, only a few yards away, lay the beach of Paphos where Aphrodite was born from a wave, in somewhat the same way that Victorian children were told babies were found in cabbages. On that Paphian shore are still to be discerned remains of the two temples which were subsequently built there, broken pieces of porphyry and basalt and of rare marbles.