Page:The lives of celebrated travellers (Volume 2).djvu/77

 wheat and millet are substituted for the proper wheat.

On the 23d of May, 1751, he sailed from Sidon in a small French ship bound for Cyprus, and on the 28th cast anchor in the harbour of Larnaco. Though he visited this island with no intention of travelling in it, being once there he could not forbear making a few excursions into the interior, of which the first was to the mountain of Santa Croce, the loftiest in the country. In the rusty-coloured limestone rock which forms the basis of this mountain are mines of lead, copper, and rock-crystal; which last, of which some fine specimens are found near the ancient Paphos, was at first mistaken for a diamond-*mine by the Turks. A few days after his return from Santa Croce he visited Famagosta, once, when in possession of the Venetians, a splendid city; but now a heap of miserable ruins.

From Cyprus he sailed to Rhodes and Scio, and thence to Smyrna, carrying along with him an incredible quantity of curiosities in the three kingdoms of nature, which he had collected in Egypt and the Levant. His sole desire now was to return by the first occasion which should present itself to Sweden; but his strength had been so much impaired by the fatigue of travelling and the heats of Palestine, that he was constrained to defer his departure from Smyrna. His disorder, however, which was a confirmed consumption, proceeded rapidly; and although, as is usual with persons labouring under that disease, he continued to preserve hope to the last, his struggles were soon over. His death happened on the 9th of February, 1752, in a small country-house in the neighbourhood of Smyrna.

His friends in Sweden, by whom he was much beloved, were greatly afflicted at the news of his death; and to add to their sorrow, they learned at the same time, that having during his residence in the East contracted a debt of one hundred and fifty pounds,