United States or Micronesia ? Vote for the TOP Country of the Week !
And we stand there two hours! "I can't keep up this artificial flow of low comedy. The plain fact of the situation is that we're being hustled toward an amphibious thing with paddle-wheels named The Skylark, and I haven't said good-bye to you. "Ailsa, it isn't likely that anything is going to knock my head off or puncture vital sections of me.
The word "amphibious" is, or rather was, well applied to many of the seamen, whalers, and sealers, who dwelt on the eastern end of Long Island, or the Vineyard, around Stonington, and, perhaps we might add, in the vicinity of New Bedford. The Nantucket men had not base enough, in the way of terra firma, to come properly within the category.
As they could not afford ten dollars twice a week for carriage hire, they put on sea-boots and oilskins over their ball-gowns, and then paddled themselves across a mile and a half of rough water, shook out their creases and touched up their hair on arrival, danced all the evening, and then paddled themselves home, whatever the weather. Most Bermudian girls, indeed, seem quite amphibious.
They were not unwilling to catch fish, but they had nothing to catch them with; and, strange as it may seem, these islanders, who could scarcely move five yards in any direction without falling into the sea, these amphibious Irishmen, did not know the art of catching fish!
Romance does not often exhibit a scene that strikes the imagination more than this little desert in these depths of Western obscurity, occupied not by a gross herdsman, or amphibious fisherman, but by a gentleman and two ladies, of high birth, polished manners and elegant conversation, who, in a habitation raised not very far above the ground, but furnished with unexpected neatness and convenience, practised all the kindness of hospitality, and refinement of courtesy.
It was named Halbrane Land, in memory of our schooner, and we called the strait that separated the two parts of the polar continent the Jane Sound. Then we took to shooting the penguins which swarmed upon the rocks, and to capturing some of the amphibious animals which frequented the beach.
The end was in many ways like the beginning. Sören was like the original man in this also, that he too was amphibious. He understood everything, farming, fishing and handicraft. But he was not sharp enough to do more than just earn a bare living, there was never anything to spare. This was the difference between the ascent and the descent.
So long as such intervention took an amphibious form they knew its disturbing effect upon a European situation was always out of all proportion to the intrinsic strength employed or the positive results it could give. Its operative action was that it threatened positive results unless it were strongly met. Its effect, in short, was negative.
But let me not so hasten over this part of my friend's journey as to omit all mention of the amphibious Irish houses which stand about on the low lands along the railroad-sides, and which you half expect to see plunge into the tidal mud of the neighborhood, with a series of hoarse croaks, as the train approaches.
Its long glittering reaches were vacant, a rare circumstance, for the Cherokees of that date were almost amphibious in habit, reveling in the many lovely streams of their mountain country; on the banks their towns were situated, and this fact doubtless contributed to the neatness of their habitations and personal cleanliness, to which the travelers of those times bear a surprised testimony.
Word Of The Day