Records of Captain Clapperton's Last Expedition to Africa, Volumen1

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H. Colburn and R. Bentley, 1830
 

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Página 3 - My rambling inclinations began to display themselves in early youth. I was never easy a great while together in one place, and used to be delighted to play truant and stroll from town to town, and from village to village, whenever I could steal an opportunity ; as well as to mix in the society of boys possessing restless habits and inclinations similar to my own. I used also to listen with unmixed attention to old women's tales about the ceremonies and. manners of the natives of distant regions of...
Página 4 - I used also to listen with unmixed attention to old women's tales about the ceremonies and manners of the natives of distant regions of the earth, and never felt greater pleasure than when, dandling me on their knees, or stroking down my face with their aged hands, they used to say, ' You will be sure . to see two kingdoms, Richard, for you have two crowns upon your head.1' "Their marvellous descriptions of monsters existing, as they affirmed, in remote lands, likewise conspired to raise in me a...
Página 157 - ... the wrist and held me hard ; Then goes he to the length of all his arm, And with his other hand thus o'er his brow, He falls to such perusal of my face As he would draw it.
Página 6 - I was no more than nine years of age, as nearly as my memory will allow me to guess, when, owing to a series of domestic misfortunes, I left the paternal roof, and have ever since been almost a stranger in the place of my nativity. " At the early age of eleven I accompanied a mercantile gentleman to the West Indies, and whilst in St. Domingo was attacked with the fever of the country, suffering so severely under its influence that my life was despaired of; but, owing chiefly to the kindness and attention...
Página 47 - O'er-picturing that Venus where we see The fancy outwork nature: on each side her Stood pretty dimpled boys, like smiling Cupids, With divers-colour'd fans, whose wind did seem To glow the delicate cheeks which they did cool, And what they undid did . . . Her gentlewomen, like the Nereides, So many mermaids, tended her i...
Página 145 - Sultan, father to the reigning prince, who entreated them to finish their journey through the country by land, instead of proceeding down the Quorra to the salt water; observing, that the people inhabiting the islands and borders of the river, were ferocious in their manners, and would not suffer their canoe to proceed without having first rifled it of its contents, and exposed them to every species of indignity and insult ; and that if their lives were spared, they would infallibly be detained as...
Página 158 - Poor widow Zuma! I almost fancy I see her now, waddling into our house, a moving world of flesh, 'puffing and blowing like a blacksmith's bellows,' and the very pink and essence of African fashion. Her hair used to be carefully dyed with indigo, and of a rich and vivid blue ; her feet and hands stained with...
Página 11 - There was a charm in the very sound of Africa, that always made my heart flutter on hearing it mentioned : whilst its boundless deserts of sand ; the awful obscurity in which many of the interior regions were enveloped; the strange and wild aspect of countries that had never been trodden by the foot of a European, and even the very failure of all former undertakings to explore its hidden wonders, united to strengthen the determination I had come to, of embracing the earliest opportunity of penetrating...
Página 136 - The Africans have less of sentiment in their love affairs than Europeans ; they have no stolen interviews — no rambling in verdant fields — no affectionate squeezes of the hand — no language of the eyes — no refined feeling — no moonlight reveries ; all is conducted in the most unpoetical business-like way imaginable, and is considered in the light of one of their least important concerns ; the lover merely saying to his intended bride, " Should you like to become my wife, my dear?

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