Vietnam or Thailand ? Vote for the TOP Country of the Week !
Updated: June 27, 2025
I found that energy and boldness influence all people, whether Arabs, Persians, Bedouins, or others." It was this strength of will which crowned Madame Pfeiffer's enterprises with success. Towards evening, she says, she saw, to her great delight, a caldron of mutton seething on the fire.
She risked Dennis one night under the eyes of her own sex. Governor Gorges had always been very kind to us; and when he gave his great annual party to the town, asked us. I confess I hated to go. I was deep in the new volume of Pfeiffer's "Mystics," which Haliburton had just sent me from Boston. "But how rude," said Polly, "not to return the Governor's civility and Mrs.
The colony of Petropolis proved to be situated in the depth of a virgin forest, at an elevation of 2500 feet above the sea-level. At the time of Madame Pfeiffer's visit it was about fourteen months old, having been founded for the special purpose of providing the capital with fruits and vegetables which, in tropical climates, will thrive only in very elevated situations.
Rapidly traversing the shrubless, herbless plains of Mesopotamia, they reached at length the town of Mosul, the point from which travellers proceed to visit the ruins of Nineveh. These have been so carefully explored and ably described by Layard and the late George Smith, that it is needless to quote Madame Ida Pfeiffer's superficial observations at any length.
Either the scene has greatly altered since Madame Pfeiffer's visit, or her imagination has considerably over-coloured its principal features. That is, if we accept the accounts of recent travellers, and especially that of Captain Burton, who has laboured so successfully to reduce the romance of Icelandic travel to plain matter of fact.
Shortly afterwards, when she wished to dine, she could obtain nothing but lukewarm water, bread so hard that she was obliged to soak it before it was eatable, and a cucumber without salt or vinegar. At a village near Kerku the caravan halted for ten days. On the first day Madame Pfeiffer's patience was severely tested; for all the women of the place hastened to examine "the strange woman."
Lastly it is poured into wooden colanders, to filter it thoroughly from the molasses still remaining. The whole process occupies eight or ten days. Such, in brief, is Madame Pfeiffer's explanation. Our adventurous lady now in her sixtieth year made an excursion, of course, to Mont Orgueil, which commands a very fine view of the island scenery.
It was on the 25th of April, 1857, that Madame Pfeiffer sailed for Madagascar, and on the last day of the month she reached the port of Tamatavé. Of late years Tamatavé has grown into a place of much commercial importance, but in Madame Pfeiffer's time it was but a poor, though a very large village, with between 4,000 and 5,000 inhabitants.
The caravan set out on the 8th of July, and next day crossed the hills that intervene between Mesopotamia and Kurdistan. The latter country has never enjoyed a good reputation among travellers, and Madame Pfeiffer's experience of it confirmed its evil fame.
So wildly romantic was the scene, with its shifting lights and shadows, its sudden bursts of silvery radiance where the valley lay open to the moon, and its depths of darkness in many a sinuous recess, that even Madame Pfeiffer's rude companions felt the influence of its strange beauty; and, as they rode along, not a sound was heard but the clatter of the horses' hoofs, and the fall of rolling stones into the chasm below.
Word Of The Day
Others Looking