TURKEY IN ASIA. 



901 



Holy Land by the Turks, took shelter m Rhodes, and long baffled the arms of IMahomet and 

 Solyman by their brilliant courage. But the Turkish sway has long since obliterated all these 

 glories, and Rhodes is now poor and thinly peopled. 



Cyprus, the largest of the islands, lies the furthest south ; it is 140 miles long, and 60 in 

 breadth. It is traversed by two lofty mountainous ridges ; and tlie whole face of the island is so 

 verdant as to resemble an immense liower-garden. It produces vines, olives, lemons, oranges, 

 apricots, and numerous other fruits. Corn and silk are raised, and carpets manufactured. The 

 population is about 80,000. 



5. Climate. In the mountainous parts, especiully in Armenia, the climate is temperate and 

 healthy. In Mesopotamia, it is hot and unhealthy. The Simoom, a j)oisonous wind of the de 

 sert, is common here. This country contains the most fertile provinces of Asia, and produces all 

 the luxuries of life in abundance. Raw silk, corn, wine, oil, honey, fruit of every species, coffee, 

 myrrh, frankincense, and odoriferous plants and drugs, flourish here, almost v.dthout culture, which 

 is practised chiefly by the Greeks and Armenians. The olives, citrons, lemons, oranges, figs, and 

 dates produced in these piovinces, are highly delicious, and in great plenty. As it was hence, that 

 arts and civilization were carried to other regions, so are we indebted to this and the neighboring 

 countries for some of our most valuable fruits. The walnut and peach are from the tracts bordering 

 on Persia ; the vine and apricot, from Armenia ; the cherry and sweet chestnut, with the fig, the 

 olive, and mulberry, from Lesser Asia ; the melon and cucumber are also indigenous to this soil ; 

 and several of our most ornamental trees and garden plants, the liorse-chestnut, lilac, sweet jasmine, 

 damask rose, hyacinth, tulip, several kinds of iris, ranunculus have been borrowed from these 

 favored regions. In the south, there are extensive deserts, \^here no tree casts a welcome 

 shade ; but the hills and valleys of Asia Minor, are crowned with forests of pine, fir, larch, 

 cedar, beech, various species of oaks, the almond, lentisks, oistachio trees, terebinth, &c. 



Aklon. Persian Iris. Gall JVuts. 



Gall-nuts are the resuh of a morbid action excited in the leaf-buds of several species ol oak. 

 occasioned by an insect depositing its eggs in the bud. The galls of commerce occur chiefly 

 on the Quercus infectoria., and vary in size from that of a pea to that of a nutmeg ; the bes! 

 rome f/om Aleppo and Smyrna, 



