1938

G.H.McF.

Episkopi, Cyprus.

May 25, 1938Dear [handwritten: Mr.] [handwritten: Will],

Many thanks for your letter and cable in which you approve of the restoration of Temple A stairway in stone. Your letter arrived very promptly but the letter you say you had already written Pete, and which you supposed I had already seen, has not yet reached him. Mails from Greece are apparantly very independible. I thought, at first a restoration in stone would be out of the question, as no blocks, or few, of suitible size were to be found either at Apollo or Kourion. Those in the P.W.D. building are too small though the colour as you rmembere is just about what we want. It then occured to me we might quarry the stone at a place near St. Anne on the coast, a place I had noticed two years ago had been possibly quarried in ancient times, [handwritten: for] [handwritten: stone]. I went there with Triphon, who is something of a stone cutter, and he said the stone there was exactly the same as that used in the buildings at Apollo. Little material though was available of the same colour. Most of it is very light in colouring, but Triphon and others swear that by soaking it in red earth and water it will acquire the same colour within a few days and that no amount of rain will wash it off again. This is encouraging if true. As it is, the first block restored looks so much like the original block next to it, that it will take a very sharp eye to notice … continues