William Turner, attached to the British Embassy to the Porte, visited Cyprus and gave a lengthy description of his experiences in his travelogue, “A Journal of a Tour in the Levant”:
After loading the mules and charging them with some provisions, with which the Archbishop had been kind enough to furnish us, we left the city at seven, by the western gate. It has three gates. The porter at first would not let us pass, alleging that he had orders to stop all the Greeks to work at the clearing of a mountain stream, for which service he wanted to press our guide. I tried fair words and pleaded my firman as long as my patience lasted, but finding them to no avail, I forcibly pushed aside the young soldier who opposed our passage who forthwith ran away. And as the porter himself sat all the while quietly smoking his pipe while be issued his decrees, we met with no further obstacle.