Vietnam or Thailand ? Vote for the TOP Country of the Week !
Updated: June 23, 2025
This island of Amboina, so famous, or rather infamous, for the cruelties and injustice formerly committed there by the Dutch upon the English, is twelve leagues long from N. to S. being high and mountainous, with intermediate vallies, which are very fertile, but the hills are in a great measure barren. The soil of the vallies is black, and affords salt-petre.
They have probably retired from this part of the coast in consequence of being persecuted, as ambergris was formerly found in great abundance on these shores, but is now very rare. All the islands are very mountainous and craggy, so that only a few vallies among the hills and the flat grounds near the shore are susceptible of cultivation.
The Indian woman informs me that a fiew years ago Buffalow was very plenty in those plains & Vallies quit as high as the head of Jeffersons river, but flew of them ever come into those Vallys of late years owing to the Shoshones who are fearfull of passing into the plains West of the mountains and Subsist on what game they Can Catch in the Mountains principally and the fish which they take in the E. fork of Lewis's river.
No country upon Earth can appear with a more rugged and barren Aspect than this doth; from the Sea for as far inland as the Eye can reach nothing is to be seen but the Summits of these rocky Mountains, which seem to lay so near one another as not to admit any Vallies between them.
Small pangs should we feel in leaving the gardens, woods, and halls of the palaces of the Bourbons at Versailles, which we feared would soon be tainted by the dead, when we looked forward to vallies lovelier than any garden, to mighty forests and halls, built not for mortal majesty, but palaces of nature's own, with the Alp of marmoreal whiteness for their walls, the sky for their roof.
At the end of an hour and half we left the torrent: the plain opened to the east, and is here called Esselsele; our road over it was in the direction W.S.W. The rocks spread over the plain were calcareous. At the end of three hours and a half we again entered the mountain, and continued in its vallies, slowly descending, for the whole night. April 23rd.
The river Doria, which, rising on the summit of Mount Cenis, had dashed for many leagues over the precipices that bordered the road, now began to assume a less impetuous, though scarcely less romantic character, as it approached the green vallies of Piedmont, into which the travellers descended with the evening sun; and Emily found herself once more amid the tranquil beauty of pastoral scenery; among flocks and herds, and slopes tufted with woods of lively verdure and with beautiful shrubs, such as she had often seen waving luxuriantly over the alps above.
After the friends had parted, Antonio pursued his lonely path, shunning the great road, partly for the sake of brooding uninterruptedly over his sorrows, and partly to avoid the swarms that were flocking along the highway, and were often troublesome at the nightly resting-places. Thus following his own mood, he roamed through the plains and through the vallies of the Apennines.
Shall I pass you that are commons? Truly my delight hath not been so great upon this mountain, as to make me overlook you. My good people, beloved in Christ, have ye nothing to contribute for this work? Have ye not so much power as the mountains and hills have? Or, have ye not such substance as the vallies?
Both of these rivers derive their origin from the Alpine vallies of the Andes, the former running westwards to the Pacific; while the latter takes a much longer course towards the Southern Atlantic.
Word Of The Day
Others Looking