United States or Mozambique ? Vote for the TOP Country of the Week !
She was "abroad" and she gave herself up to it, responded to it, in the bright air, before the pink houses, among the bare-legged fishwives and the red-legged soldiers, with the instant certitude of a vocation.
So bad were Junot's tactics that his whole force would have been cut off from Torres Vedras, had not Wellesley's senior officer, Sir Harry Burrard, arrived just in time to take over the command and stop the pursuit. Thereupon Wellesley sarcastically exclaimed to his staff: "Gentlemen, nothing now remains to us but to go and shoot red-legged partridges."
Messengers were at once sent to all the red-legged birds, among the bulrushes of the Nile, or that lived on the roofs of the temples, or that perched on the pyramids, or dwelt on the top of old columns, or that stood in rows along the eaves of the town houses. The town birds gained their living by acting as street cleaners, but the river birds made their meals chiefly on fish, frogs, and mice.
The bustard is gone from Salisbury Plain; the fenland butterflies have disappeared with the drainage of the fens. In their place the red-legged partridge invades Norfolk; the American black bass is making himself quite at home, with Yankee assurance, in our sluggish rivers; and the spoonbill is nesting of its own accord among the warmer corners of the Sussex downs.
The walk upon the rampart led me round to one of the gates of the town, where I found some small modern fortifications and sundry red-legged soldiers, and, beyond the fortifications, another shady walk a mail, as the French say, as well as a champ de manoeuvre on which latter expanse the poor little red-legs were doing their exercise. It was all very quiet and very picturesque, rather in miniature; and at once very tidy and a little out of repair. This, however, was but a meagre back-view of La Rochelle, or poor side-view at best. There are other gates than the small fortified aperture just mentioned; one of them, an old grey arch beneath a fine clock-tower, I had passed through on my way from the station. This substantial Tour de l'Horloge separates the town proper from the port; for beyond the old grey arch the place presents its bright, expressive little face to the sea. I had a charming walk about the harbour and along the stone piers and sea-walls that shut it in. This indeed, to take things in their order, was after I had had my breakfast (which I took on arriving) and after I had been to the hôtel de ville. The inn had a long narrow garden behind it, with some very tall trees; and passing through this garden to a dim and secluded salle
There are antelope and wild pig here but they are very difficult to stalk owing to the open character of the ground. There are also a few red-legged partridges and many pigeons so that one always found something to shoot. The native camp here consists of a large square shut off by a wooden fence.
When I passed here on a former trip, on the 6th of June, this peak was shrouded in snow. There are some patches of snow even now, one of them descending in glacier fashion down the slope on the other side; they call it "eternal," but I question whether it will survive the heats of autumn. Beyond a brace of red-legged partridges, I saw no birds whatever.
On the coast of Karamania the ibex is to be found in considerable quantities; the red-legged partridge and the francolin are also very abundant, and give capital sport. There are also at the head of the gulf I have alluded to large marshes for duck and snipe. A yacht must anchor at some distance off the entrance of this river, but the anchorage is quite safe in all weathers.
The soldiers saw him smile and say something to Major Lent, saw him bare his handsome sword, saw the buglers setting the shining bugles to their lips. "Now, charge, you red-legged rascals!" shouted Major Lent; and up from the grass rose a wave of scarlet and flashing steel. Charge!
I know those fighters with women's mouths and boys' cheeks. One such from the circle of my own friends, sixteen years old, slipped away from his nursery, and dashed in under, an assumed name among the red-legged Zouaves, in whose company he got an ornamental bullet-mark in one of the earliest conflicts of the war.
Word Of The Day