United States or Bhutan ? Vote for the TOP Country of the Week !
So two hours must have passed, and it seemed to me that the movement in the courtyards and in the Chateau grew less and less. Presently half a dozen huntsmen, leading their hounds, passed close to me, talking in loud and aggrieved tones. "Mille diables!" exclaimed one. "To think it is all off!" "Never have I known the like!" said another. "What has happened, my friends?"
Of the houses the passer-by sees no more than is seen in any other Oriental town: lofty walls, windowless, with low entrances; and the fronts always looking in upon the open courtyards, which bloom with trees and flowers, and usually adjoin a pleasant garden. Inside, the chambers are usually lofty and spacious, with rows of windows which seem to form complete walls of glass.
The almost complete absence of windows made it impossible to orient one's self by glancing occasionally at some object of known position outside; the frequent turns in the passages and changes of level in the floors were very confusing; the small courtyards which admitted light to the interior afforded no outlook, and I simply roamed from bastion to bastion and from corridor to corridor, without knowing where I was, or what relation the place in which I stood bore to the castle as a whole.
He had been more fortunate than those poor wretches who are sent to the penitentiary on the plains of La Mancha, where the men have to carry up the water on their backs, suffering the torments of an Arctic cold. Neither had he been in the prisons of old Castile where snow whitens the courtyards and sifts in through the barred windows.
If one could only get past this boundary and the protocol had not stepped in! Moved a little by such thoughts, I advanced on the central gate, and peered through a chink near which an infantryman was standing alert, rifle in hand. There were the marble courtyards, the beautiful yellow decorated roofs.
Only the latter use the Abonsá for transport purposes I think very unwisely. My descent of the stream will show all its dangers of snags, rapids, and heavy currents. Here it rises high during the floods, and sometimes it swamps the lower courtyards. I put up at Mr. Crocker's establishment, which was, as usual, nice and clean; and the officials went on to Effuenta.
Fireplaces with chimneys are extremely rare, so that ventilation depends entirely on the doors and windows, which, it should be stated, are by no means unusually large in most of the sleeping rooms of the poor. Generally in Havana, less generally in other cities, the entrances and courtyards are flagged with stone, while the rooms are usually floored with tile or marble.
The immediate approach is lined with open shops or stalls for the sale of sacred pictures, engravings of saints, and other articles which pilgrims love to carry back to their homes. Within the enclosure trees throw a cool shade, under which, as in the courtyards of mosques in Constantinople, the hot and weary may repose.
The courtyards of the Chateau were thronged with an immense concourse of people; they demanded that the King and Queen, with their children, should make their appearance in the balcony.
Chepe was pretty full of leisurely pedestrians; the doorways of the taverns were crowded; jugglers balanced themselves in the dusty gutter, and merry maidens tripped it neatly in the inn courtyards to the sound of pipe and tabor.
Word Of The Day