John Macdonald Kinneir, a captain of the East India Company visited Cyprus 2 - 24 January 1814, having travelled from Constantinople through Eastern Asia Minor:
I hired one horse, four mules and a jackass to carry myself and attendants to Larnica; but it had rained with such violence the preceding day and night, that I would not have quitted Famagusta had I not found myself most uncomfortably situated in a miserable hut, scarcely waterproof, and filled with fleas, bugs and vermin of every kind. The morning was fine and we mounted about eleven o'clock, but we had not gone a couple of miles before the rain again fell in torrents. It blew a furious gale from the west; the roads were so deep and slippery that the cattle were stumbling at every step; and the surrounding country was so bare and desolate, that there was not a single object on which the eye might repose with pleasure. I saw neither villages nor trees, nor even shrubs, excepting the small thorns before mentioned, which covered a vast and dreary flat, over which we travelled for thirteen miles to the village of Ormidia.
