Page:Travels and adventures of William Lithgow.pdf/20

This page has been validated.

20

Rhodes, where he saw the remains of the Colossus, and to Lemisso in Cyprus, from whence he went with an interpreter to visit Nicosia, the capital; and, on his return, meeting four Turks, they would have his mule to ride upon, which his interpreter refusing, they pulled him off its back, beat him pityfully, and left him almost dead. His companion fled and escaped, and had not some Greeks accidentally come by and relieved him, he must have perished. He sailed from thence to Tripoli, in Syria, and while he waited there for a caravan to Aleppo, being mindful to visit Babylon, he agreed with three Venitian merchants to go a day’s journey to see the cedars of Libanus. Ascending the mountain, their guide mistaking their way amidst the intricate path of the rocks, two of their asses fell over a bank, and broke their necks; and had they not met by chance with a Christian Armaronite, they must have been lost among the rocks, heaps of snow, and violent torrents. At the place where the cedars grow they saw but twenty-four in all; and nine miles westward, there are seventeen more. He was there shewn the tomb of Joshua, all of one stone, seventeen feet long, and was kindly entertained by the Bishop, or Patriarch, at Eden, and the Armoranites, or Nazaritans of the other villages.