Vietnam or Thailand ? Vote for the TOP Country of the Week !
Updated: April 30, 2025
The mode Captain Owen adopted of gaining an insight into the Fernandian language was, perhaps, the best that could have been devised: viz. the sending a person to reside with the natives in the interior, as has been before stated; but the result proved very unsatisfactory; for he added little to what we had previously acquired.
The Mpongwe practise a rite so resembling infant baptism that the missionaries have derived it from a corruption of Abyssinian Christianity which, like the flora of the Camarones and Fernandian Highlands, might have travelled across the Dark Continent, where it has now been superseded by El Islam.
The look of comparative civilization about these domiciles, doubtless the effect of the Portuguese and the slave trade, distinguishes them from the barbarous circular huts of the Kru-men, the rude clay walls of the Gold Coast, and the tattered, comfortless sheds of the Fernandian "Bube."
We found afterwards, however, that his Fernandian vocabulary was scarcely more copious than a sensible parrot might acquire in a month: his knowledge of the English, at all events, was so exceedingly defective, as to make another interpreter necessary, to explain what he meant to express, in our language.
Like the chiefs of Porto Novo, the despot of Dahome, the rulers of many Nigerian tribes, and even the Fernandian "Bube," these potentates may not look at the sea nor at the river. The linguist becomes more powerful than the chief, who is wholly in his power, and always receives the best presents.
Add to this the ornaments of scarification and tattooing, adopted by the sex to a greater extent than by the men: and the imagination will at once be sensible how much divinity attaches to Fernandian beauty. Like the men, the women plaster the body all over with clay and palm-oil, and also in a similar manner wear the hair long, and in curls or ringlets, well stiffened with the above composition.
Word Of The Day
Others Looking