Vietnam or Thailand ? Vote for the TOP Country of the Week !
Updated: June 7, 2025
Suddenly we heard an unfamiliar noise in the west, boum-boum, boum-boum, boum-baraboum, boum-boum, growing louder boum-boum, boum-baraboum and, suddenly, there was a great flight of water birds, aigrettes, pelicans, wild ducks and teal, which scattered over the gum trees, followed by a column of black smoke, which was scarcely flurried by the breeze that was springing up.
There are groups of women of every age, decked out in their smartest clothes, crowds of mousmes with aigrettes of flowers in their hair, or little silver topknots like Oyouki pretty little physiognomies, little, narrow eyes peeping between their slits like those of new-born kittens, fat, pale, little cheeks, round, puffed-out, half-opened lips.
The men stole out of their shelters just as the rays of the brilliant orb bathed the level sea of green treetops of the Amazonian jungle with a flood of roseate light, and scanned the sand in front of their doorways. Oomah found the symbol, a tuft of snowy, drooping aigrettes that quivered and glistened at the slightest touch.
It was Kosrew Pasha, the Grand Vizier, he who had caused so many heads to fall, the strangler of the Sheik el Islam. He bowed low several times as he passed me. After him came the Sultan's pages, handsome young fellows, carrying halberts and wearing gilt shakos with immense plumes of peacocks' feathers, aigrettes, or birds of Paradise.
And women nodded the aigrettes in their bonnets, torn from the old birds while the little ones starved to death, to show their approval, and patted their hands gloved in the skins of kids, sewed in cloth soon after their birth so they couldn't grow a fleece, and tortured all their short lives, and went home to eat pâté-de-foie gras, and broil live lobsters, thanking God they were not as the rest of men, if only they let out their check-reins a hole or so.
Aigrettes and birds of paradise fly on all sides and every hour reveals a hideous crocodile sunning himself on a sandspit. Night on the Congo enhances the loneliness that you feel on all the Central African rivers. Although the settlements are more numerous and larger than those on the Lualaba and the Kasai, there is the same feeling of isolation the moment darkness falls.
At the Superga, for instance, all details of structure seem to have been effaced by the murky air, only a comparatively feeble ring of light being seen to encircle the moon. Elsewhere, a brilliant radiated formation was conspicuous, spreading at four opposite points into four vast luminous expansions, compared to feather-plumes or aigrettes.
In the center of the apartment stood a splendid Christmas Tree, the first ever seen in that country. Instead of toys and candles there hung on its lighted boughs diamond stars, pearl necklaces, bracelets of gold ornamented with colored jewels, aigrettes of rubies and sapphires, silken belts embroidered with Oriental pearls, and daggers mounted in gold and studded with the rarest gems.
He came to Chicago on business four times a year, and he always took Effie to the theater, and to supper afterward. On those occasions, Effie's gown, wrap and hat were as correct in texture, lines, and paradise aigrettes as those of any of her non-working sisters about her.
I'd begin," he went on, his eyes smiling, "with a general massacre of incompetents old men with too little money, young men with too much old maids, aliens, incurables, the races that are too clever to work, the races that are too stupid, habitual drunkards, spreaders of disease, the women who abolished the canteen, the women who wear aigrettes.
Word Of The Day
Others Looking