The Stourbridge Observer, Cradley Heath, Halesowen & District Chronicle.
Stourbridge, West Midlands, England, 1878-08-03 00:00:00

JOCULAR CUTTINGS FROM AMERICAN

PAPERS.

A Maine editor, noticing the marriage of a contem-
por.ry, remarks of the bride, "She will do the State a service
if she makes him a better and more truthful man."

A young woman in Chicago, who lost her speech by
a severe cold, had twenty offers of marriage in one week.—
Western Paper.
A school-teacher at Easthampton, Mass., tried to
thrash the whole school at once, instead of taking a dozen
at a time. Twenty seven bites will prove fatal collectively.
One of the philosophers remarks that if a man had
as much jnmp in him, according lo his size, as a flea has, he
could vault over the highest church steeple. This is true
philosophy, and still much stronger philosophy to think
that if an elephant had as much talk in him, ace'n.ding to
his size, as the average house-cat has, he could talk from
England with his friends and relatives in Africa.

A Rocky Mountain editor, alluding to the demand
for female suffrage, female doctors, and female clergymen,
remarks that another want presents itself—that of female
women.

It is reported that the first silver dollar coined in
the united States has been found. It is hold by twenty•elght
different American citizens.

The Houston Telegram, says that there is a paper
at Brownville, Texas, one half in Spanish aud the other half
in Juan Stilling.

A Troy inventor will shortly take out a patent for a
catephoue. By means of wires stretched along backyard
fences and housetops he conveys, with the aid of some
machinery, all coscatenated caterwauls into an air-tight
barrel. By another simple contrivance the sound can be
compressed, and can be used in quantities for tire and
burglar alarms. The inventor says that it is useful for
blasting locks.

The whistle of a locomotive has been likened, by a
writer of a strong eomparative turn, to the appeal of a
lawyer when Satin gets him.

Undue indulgence in strawberries gives people the
hydrophobia. (This American statement is promulgated
with a view to bringing down the price of strawberries.)

And now they say the reason a woman can't throw
things as straight as a man is because her collar-bone is dd.
ferently shaped. We always thought some good reason
ought to be invented for her awful performances in that
line.

An American farmer was going out to his American
corn crib the other American morning when he saw a large
Arne, lean rat, with head erect, carrying a full-sized American
ear of corn in his mouth, while at the rappe t4me his tail was
mapped ronnti antkliVr Targb ear, Wr.ftb hb was dragging
Whinll him.

INFORMATION RESPECTING THE
ISLAND OF CYPRUS.

(From Tuesday's Times.)

Information concerning the new British possession
in the Levant is rapidly accumulating. A few weeks
ago inquiries concerning Cy-rus, address, d even to
well-informed persona, would have met with a very
vague reply. Now we all know something about the,
subject, and must people are possessed ef a good deal
more information then can be got from the encyclo-
i whet to which Lord S dishury referred the leader of
the Opposition in the House of Lords. Never-
the-less much of our newly-acquired information
is a little out of date. Compilers even of
the most recent gazetteers and books of reference
could not be expected to foresee that Cyprus would
suddenly become an object of surpassing interest to
every Englishman, and that we should sive more
about its present condition and the prospects it offers
to capital and industry than about all-its earlier
histoy, from its first Phcenician colonization down to
its final conquest by the Turks. As usually happens.
however, the supply of information soon became equal
to the demand. Travellers and natives, merchants, and
agriculturists, archeologists and explorers, narrated
their experience in our columns and elsewhere, and
those who were possessed of any knowledge con-
cerning Cyprus suddenly found themselves called
upon to put it at the service of the public. We
turned to forgotten Blue Boeks and to the neglected
reports of Consuls, and we soon found that the Foreign
Office was possessed of a great deal more information
on the subject than Lord S sliahury deigned to vouch-
safe to Lord Granville. A former Consul in Cyprus,
Mr. Hamilten Lang, who has resided several
years in the island, and took a great interest in its
welfare, has contributed to the forthcoming number
of "Macmillan's Magazine" a very interesting and
useful account of his observations and experience.
Information coming from so competent a source
will be specially welcome at the present moment,
and politicians, capitalists, and travellers will all
find much to interest them in Mr. Lang's article.
Cyprus, they will learn, is neither a paradise nor
a desert; it is fertile, but uncultivated ; produc•
tive, but neglected; it is not specially unhealthy, but
in certain parts it is infested with fever and ague;
its climate is that of the Levant and of the north
coast of Africa, not snore trying than Malta and
Alexandria nor less oppressive than Syria and the ad-
joining coasts. The rainfall is scanty and precarious,
and locusts are an ever-menacing scourge to agricul-
ture, though at one time a Pasha of rare energy and
beneficence did a good deal for their extermination.
Communication is difficult, life is simple, and agri-
culture is primitive; barely one-tenth of the island
is at present under cultivation, and the fiscal arrange-
ments of the Turkish Government are such that some
of the most lucrative agricultural industries have been
abandoned under the pressure of ill adjusted taxation.
Nevertheless, the population, amounting, it is sup-
posed, to about 180,000, of wham rather more than
two-thirds are Christians and the remainder Mahome-
dans, are peaceful, contented, and singularly honest.
Christians and Mussulmans live together in amity,
brigandage is unknown, and Mr. Lang relates thatehe
has sent large surns of English gold in native hands all
over the island without a single mishap.
Such in brief epitome is Mr. Lang's account of the
Levantine island to which the eyes of all Englishmen
are at this moment directed. The sober description
presents a somewhat depressing contrast to the ac-
counts of wealth, fertility, and magnificence which
come down to us from antiquity. Cyprus gave its
name to copper, but the mines have long since been
abandoned, and even the extent of its mineral wealth
is now unknown. It was once celebrated for its
forests, and for its wealth of rare and costly woods;
but few trees now exist in the island, and their
disappearance is probably the cause of those dis-
astrous droughts of which records are only
found in its later history. Wine of Cyprus was once
the choicest beverage of the Mediterranean, and when
the vine was first established in Madeira it was from
Cyprus that the plants were brought. Wine is still
made in Cyprus, and its export amounts to 500,000
gallons annually, but the cultivation of the vine is
checked by Turkish taxation, and the vessels in
which the wine is fermented are smeared with tar,
so that the common wine of the country has a most
unpalatable flavour. Formerly tobacco of very fine
quality was grown in large quantities, but its culti-
vation has now been almost extinguished by a tax
of nearly fifty per cent. Wheat grows readily, but
as it is thrashed in the primidve manner of Syria
unchanged since the days of Abraham, the grain be-
comes mixed with small stones from the threshing
floor, and is unfit for use in modern mills. The statis-
tics, again, of the cotton trade between Cyprus and
this country for the four years 1670-73 tell an instruc-
tive tale. 'The exports to England were valued at
£10,6..9, £5,025, £2,890, and £550 in each of those
years respectively. This remarkable decline is partly
no doubt to be explained by unfavourable condi-
tions of the weather, on which the success of
the cotton crop so entirely depends, but Mr. Lang's
experience suggests another cause, to which some
of the effect is doubtless due. The pod of
the native cotton does not open at maturity
nor shed the cotton on the groun I as is the
case with American cotton. Mr. Laing introduced
American seed, and his produce when sent to Liver-
pool was classified at only 5 per cent, less than
"middling Orleans." But though the American
cotton is better and more sure of success than the
native, the local cultivators were unable to use it on
account of its peculiarity of shedding the cotton at
maturity. The tax on cotton is collected in kind
and on the spot, and as the c *Hector could not be
in all places at once, he forbade the pickieg of the
cotton until he found it convenient to attend, and
thus it was shed on the ground as it ripened and was
spoilt before it could be gathered. Nearly every other
product of the island is checked in the same way. Even
if an enterprising and honest Patsha at times strove to
apply a remedy for such a state of things, he
was generally removed from his post before he had
time to carry out his reforms. It is clear, then, that
the Turkish Government has done its best to render
Cyprus a desert, but that climate and the forces of
nature have been too powerful for the neglect and
oppression of mean. The island supports itself on
orte.one-
tenth of its surface very
time
before its produce is substantially iscreased, for
Cyprus and its new colonists will have to lay to heart
imperfectlym a y
b cultivated e
ao
b
and
pays a revenue to the P g
the advice which Lord Beaconsfield gave to the Greeks
and learn to be patient; but it will be strange if in
course of time the finn, just, and stable rule which
will accompany the Englieh occupation does not
restore to Cyprus a good deal of its lost prosperity.
The process of regeneration will necessarily be slow
Those who go to find a new Eldorado in Cyprus will
assuredly be disappointed. Forests will not grow in
a day, and until the mountainous parts of the island
are reforested, or until irrigation provides against
the droughts which periodically occur, all agricul-
tural enterprise involving much outlay of capitalwill be a precarious venture. In the third century
it is said that no rain fell in the island for
seventeen years, and so late as the year 1869
the rainfall only amounted to 5i inches in the
twelvemonth. It will doubtless he possible for
Engliett administrators to contend with the plague
of locusts, for they have already been nearly extermi-
nated by the efforts of Said Pasha, a former governor
of the island. In one year about 62 tons of locust eggs
were destroyed, thus relieving Cyprus alone, according
to Mr. Lang's estimate, of the germs of no less than
5 1,000 millions of locusts. Since the time of Said
Pasha the ravages of the locust have been kept within
bounds, and it ought to be possible with reasonable
Cyprus
coursevigilanceyprus
oi
tst
rt
ro
atehx etrer
primary mi
the n
oasbt
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ceuctrthi it syi doef st thoreuu cr toi
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eff
than the development of local resources, but we
shall nevertheless hold ourselves bound to give
the island a better chance of prosperity than
it has heti under the capricious and exacting rule
of the Turk. If we can make it a model of govern-
ment and organization for Asia Minor, and the
Levant, so much the better; but Mr. Lang warns
us that we shall inevitably fail if we endeavour
to do too much at once anti to organise an elaborate
system of government on an exclusively Western
model. Roads will have to be made, marshes to be
drained and fevers banished, forests to be replanted,
irrigation works to be undertaken, and the whole
population inspired with a confidence in the justice and
stability of the new Government. When these
primary tasks have been well begun, capital will
gradually flow towards the island, and we may then
fairly hope that the coming generations will reap
where the present generation can only sow. Cyprus
has long had all the chances against it, and still has
contended not unsuccessfully in the unequal struegle.
Now it has many chances in its favour, and it will be
strange if it fails to take advantage of them. 'When
Sir Garnet Wolseley returns from his onerous charge,
we can hardly expect that he will bring home with
him anything equivalent to the 7,000 talents which
one of his early predecessors, Cato the Younger, is
said to have brought from Cyprus to the Roman
Treasury. We • shall be content if the result of
his administration is seen in industry established
and labour freed from oppression, in agriculture
regenerated and taxation reformed, and in wise pro-
vision for the prosperous development of nature's in-
exhaustible resources in an island which has enriched
all its former possessors, and has never been wholly
ruined even under the prolonged dominion of its late
m asters.