DI CESNOLAS DISCOVERIES AT CURIVM. 67 



tions in his book as if by accident, but leaves us in doubt whether he in- 

 tended to speak of a city or of a promontory. This spot is called at the 

 present day by the inhabitants 'Torno,' and lies between Cape Greco and 

 Cape Pyla. 



"During my pedestrian perambulations in that neighborhood, at the very 

 extreme point of Cape Pyla, not far from the ruins of a circular tower of 

 mediaeval construction, at an elevation of about one hundred feet from the 

 sea, I discovered by mere chance a long cavern excavated twenty-seven feet 

 in the rock, which I had the curiosity to enter. To my surprise I found in 

 it a great mass of petrified bones, the larger portion of which appeared to 

 me to be human. They adhere so tenaciously to the walls and pavement of 

 the cavern that it may be said they form an integral part of them. After 

 two hours of hard labor with iron tools we succeeded in detaching a few 

 pieces; some 1 sent to the Royal Academy of Sciences of Turin, of which I 

 am a member, and the remainder has been j)acked up in one of the boxes 

 sent to our Museum in IsFew York. A few days later I was -conducted to 

 see another such cavern, smaller in size, and only forty minutes' walk from 

 the former. There, also, are great many petrified bones adhering to the 

 pavement, and apparently of the same period of the others. The Christian 

 peasants of the neighborhood are convinced that the bones are those of 

 thirty Christian Creek martyrs. Every year in the month of March they 

 go in procession, headed by their priests, to this cavern, in order to pray 

 on these 'prehistoric bones,' 



"On my return to Larnaca, by the desire and at the request of Professor 

 John Euskin, of London, 1 superintended some excavations made at Soli for 

 his account; they lasted, however, but a few months, and with the exceD- 

 tion of some three or four statuettes, some heads, and several vases, the 

 result has not been brilliant. At Soli, in order to find good things one must 

 remove first from the surface of the soil many tons of earth brought down 

 Irom the neighboring mountains by the annual rains, and which has accu- 

 mulated upon those ruins to the height of several yards; and this prepara- 

 tory work would be both expensive and unprofitable for several months. 



"Amathus (called by the Latin poets Amatunta) was one of the oldest 

 Phoenician cities of Cyprus. It was built on the crest and southern slope of 

 a rocky hill, neither very high nor very large, and detached from several 

 others whick surrounded it. Traces of a pier, now under water, are still 

 visible near the sea-shore. It was surrounded by a thick wall, the founda- 

 tion of which I met on the northeast side of the hill after digging a few feet 

 below the surface of the ground. Remains of another wall are also seen 

 around that hill at different places, but it is of a more recent construction 

 than the other, and is probably Byzantine work. 



"On the summit of the eminence a French archaologist. Count de 

 Vogne, in 1862, visiting the island, took possession, in the name of France, 

 of an immense stone vase, which is now deposited in the Louvre Museum. 

 Fragments of another similar vase still exist, and are lying a few feet from 



