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Selected and rare materials, excerpts and observations from ancient, medieval and contemporary authors, travelers and researchers about Cyprus.
 
 
 
 
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MALLOCK W.
In an enchanted island
page 257

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protruding from under their rude doors and mules' noses poking out of their windows ; and in one place I passed a beautiful carved fountain, just such as one might see in an old town in Italy. The castle turned out to be an oblong, irregular building, with out-works facing the town ; so that it, if the town were taken, would still remain defensible. Nowhere ex-ternally was there any trace of a window. There was nothing but straight blind Avails and squat bulg-ing towers. The only detail by which the eye was arrested was a square white patch directly above the gateway: it was the lion of St. Mark, which had been let into the wall by the Venetians. And now let me tell the reader that this dark and forbid-ding building, in which perhaps his fancy detects little to interest him, is really connected with a set of names and with a story almost as familiar to every-one of us as if they had been facts of our own lives ; for in this castle is a tower still named by tradition Torre del Moro, from having once been the lodging of one of the Venetian generals, Christofero Moro, the original of the Othello of Shakespeare ; and it was to this castle, if anywhere, that Othello must have brought Desdemona. As I passed in through the long dark entrance the figure of Iago seemed to lurk in the shadow. As I climbed to the battlements by an external stair-case Othello himself came with me, speaking familiar language, and all the place was filled with a well-known company, which the reader can imagine 254 IN AN ENCHANTED ISLAND

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