United States or Mexico ? Vote for the TOP Country of the Week !
In the middle of the island, there is a prodigiously high peaked mountain, shaped like a diamond, which is always burning. I received this account from some Christians, who had been prisoners in the island, who affirmed that it was fifteen Portuguese leagues, or sixty Italian miles, from the bottom of the mountain to the top of the peak.
The mighty Maranon, as the natives call the Upper Amazon or the Solimoens, as it is named by the Portuguese was before us, having flowed down for many hundred miles from the mountain lake of Lauricocha, in Peru, 12,500 feet above the sea-level.
Returning to the station, I ensconced myself in a carriage out of the way of the cutting wind, and talked fluent bad French with a kindly old Portuguese who looked like a Quaker. Two others came in and entered into a lively conversation in which Charing Cross and London Bridge occurred at intervals. It took an hour and a quarter to do the fifteen mites between Cintra and Lisbon.
It might well have celebrated the first centennial of the discovery of printing or of the discovery of America by assembling the fresh triumphs of European art, so wonderful to us in their decay, with the still more novel productions of Portuguese India and Spanish America.
"When the old rascal said this, there wasn't a man on deck who didn't look pale, in spite of his dirt and his sunburn. The chief officer tried to keep his knees stiff, but I could see him shaking. 'What's a Water-devil? said he, trying to make believe he thought it all stuff and nonsense. The Portuguese touched his forelock.
If he knew how to dress his shoulders properly, and to direct his eyes Oh! the eyes! you should see how a Portuguese nobleman can use his eyes! Soul! my dears, soul! Can any of you look the unutterable without being absurd! You look so. And the Countess hung her jaw under heavily vacuous orbits, something as a sheep might yawn.
In Lower Guinea the Portuguese held an advantage, partly through the influence of the Catholic priests. The Capuchin missionary Merolla, for example, relates that while he was in service at the mouth of the Congo in 1685 word came that the college of cardinals had commanded the missionaries in Africa to combat the slave trade.
"We have finished," Sir Moses writes, "all the preparations for our journey, and have taken leave of all our dear relatives. I have left to Benjamin Cohen the key of a box in which there are 1300 Portuguese Bonds which I have destined for the poor of the Holy Land; if necessary he is to sell them for me.
I have seen translations of all Longfellow's principal works, in prose and poetry, in French, Italian, German, Spanish, Portuguese, Dutch, Swedish, and Danish.
With the sound of trumpets, clarions, chirimias, and atambours the fleet moved to within a short distance of the Portuguese and saluted them; then, as the thunder of the guns ceased and the light wind blew away the smoke, they circled round and stopped abreast of the royal vessel on which Charles had embarked.
Word Of The Day