William Turner, Esquire, was attached in 1812 to the staff of Sir Robert Liston, His Majesty's Ambassador to the Porte. On February 20, 1815, he left Constantinople in a small Turkish vessel, and sighted Cyprus on March 22, travelled to Palestine, visited M. Sinai, and returned to Larnaca on October 3, sailing again on November 16 for Rhodes. In his Journal of a Tour in the Levant, he includes straightforward notes of a plucky, persevering and intelligent traveller. But in Larnaca, Turner was afflicted by the fevers of the island.
November 8. Therm. 77°. In the morning I went down to the Marina to enquire for the Turkish Captain, whom I found not yet returned from Famagosto. While here the fever seized me suddenly with aguish shiverings, and so weakened me that finding myself unable to reach Larnaca I crept into bed at Mr How's, where I staid till Thursday the 16th. The fever lay very heavy on me for four days, and the other four I was so weak from the remedies applied to me and my almost total abstinence, that I could not leave my bed till the eighth day.
The Turkish Captain then called to say he should positively sail that evening, and though still so weak as to be unable to walk without a stick, I had such dread of the air of Cyprus, that I resolved to accompany him. I walked Mr How's horse to Larnaca, took leave of my friends, packed up, at a quarter past ten pushed off in a shore boat to follow the ship, which had sailed an hour before, and was some way with a light N.E. breeze. By firing frequently we succeeded in bringing her to, and I got on board at midnight. She was a large three-masted polacca, of 150 tons, with a captain and crew from the Black Sea, the latter all Greek. I lay down directly on a wretched bed, in a hole about six feet long and three broad, for the captain, not expecting me, had given his cabin, which he had promised me, to other passengers.
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