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Corinth, 8 February 1934.
Dear Mr. Jayne:
Your cablegram dated the afternoon of Feb.6th, forwarded from Athens, reached me today. It reads: In view your intended trip Cyprus George McFadden offers to join you and finance three months excavation at Curium to extent fifteen hundred dollars, April May June. Cable whether agreeable, or if impossible what else you suggest.
To this I have replied: McFadden offer most acceptable. Must inquire Cyprus whether Curium available. If not, suggest Lambousa, Classical and Byzantine site covered by existing permit.
I received a most favorable impression from the brief conversation I had last summer here with Mr. McFadden -- I assume, and hope, that he is the George McFadden of your telegram -- and am sure that working with him would be wholly agreeable.
Curium was, as you doubtless recall, one of the three sites from which I recommended that our choice be made for the campaign of 1931, after my brief tour of inspection in May-June of that year. Lapithos was selected then largely for the practical considerations that it was not inconveniently distant from Government offices and the Cyprus Museum and that necessary local negotiations promised to be simple and expeditious. I thought, and still think, Curium well worth investigating; and it might prove very important indeed. We should not, however, digging there, expect 'finds' in great number and good preservation, since we should have to do with an exposed city site, not with cemeteries, as at Lapithos, too vast and remote to have been ever completely plundered. I have heard of no commitments of the archaeological service in Cyprus that would prevent our receiving permission to excavate at Curium, but I will now make inquiry on this point by the first post and should have a reply by about the time this letter reaches you. I will then cable you either "Available" or "Unavailable".
If the site proves to be available and you after receiving my cablegram and this letter decide that we should go ahead and apply for Curium, please cable me "Curium". I will then do the little that can be done by correspondence and will plan myself to reach Cyprus at the end of March and to start negotiations with land-owners forthwith. It will take some days to establish the desirable local contacts at Limassol (capital of the province) and then to obtain the required written permission of owners to excavation of their fields. This is the most critical stage of the business, and a single recalcitrant owner (or one absent without a legal representative) might delay us badly. The consent of enough owners having been secured, we next make formal application to the Colonial Secretary, for the official permit. The office of Land Registry & Surveys is then asked to certify that the owners named in our application are really the owners of record of the specified fields. When they have replied favorably and have furnished an official copy of their plan of the area in question, the Colonial Secretary refers our application to the Museum Committee. They having assented, the Permit is issued in due course. You will agree, I think, that the procedure here outlined would be likely, even with fortune favoring, to consume a great part of the month of April, or perhaps even the whole of it. Unfortunately I shall not be free to go to Cyprus before the end of March. Could I go and begin negotiations a month earlier we … continues
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