The Bungalow and the Tent; Or, a Visit to Ceylon

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Richard Bentley, 1854 - Hunting - 311 pages

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Page 233 - Dan shall be a serpent by the way, An adder in the path, That biteth the horse heels, So that his rider shall fall backward.
Page 17 - The men of Dedan were thy merchants ; Many isles were the merchandise of thine hand ; They brought thee for a present horns of ivory, and ebony.
Page 31 - Whilst the vicinity of tanks and lagoons of the most fetid and aguish character is perfectly healthy, that of rivers is equally deadly. The apparent contradiction of the usual laws of nature is accounted for by two reasons. The tanks are covered with various kinds of aquatic plants, which, by a kind Providence, are made to serve not only as filterers and purifiers of the water itself, but even as consumers of a considerable portion of the noxious exhalations that would otherwise poison the neighborhood.
Page 31 - ... intricate nature of their course, the streams are unable to clear themselves, and this accumulation is left to decay in its bed and infest the surrounding country. There exists also another reason: the beds of the Ceylon rivers are almost invariably composed of sand, and the stream, instead of sweeping down the decomposed vegetable matter it holds in its waters, as must be the case in hard-bedded rivers, percolates through the sand, leaving the poisonous matter on the surface 'exposed to the...
Page 228 - Shaggy, and lean, and shrewd, with pointed ears And tail cropped short, half lurcher and half cur, His dog attends him.
Page 30 - ... in fact, I doubt whether any advantage would induce a West Indian to locate in such a position. "However, in the matter of climate, Ceylon stands per se, and offers a total antithesis as regards the healthiness of certain districts of most other tropical countries.
Page 87 - With that same vaunted name, Virginity. Beauty is Nature's coin; must not be hoarded, But must be current; and the good thereof Consists in mutual and partaken bliss, Unsavoury in the enjoyment of itself.
Page 30 - A large fresh-water lagoon, of a most green, slimy, tropical appearance, producing in abundance a lotus of almost Victoria Regia magnificence, stretches away to the back of the fort, and around are situated the bungalows of many of the Colombo merchants. The propinquity of this lake would, in any other tropical country...
Page 31 - The banks of the river, on the contrary, are rife with fever; the cause assigned is, that during the rainy seasons they swell to a great size, and collect the vegetable matter of a large extent of country; but owing to the rapidity with which they fall at the commencement of the dry season, and the winding and intricate nature of their course, the streams are unable to clear themselves, and this accumulation is left to decay in its bed and infest the surrounding country. There exists also another...
Page 84 - ... excessive tightness of their comboys or petticoats, which confine the free movements of their hips almost as completely as tight straps do, or did (for perhaps the fashion has changed), the shoulders of our fashionable ladies in England. Although this description of plainness is very general in its application, there were some few young ladies who really were not hideous, and who, but for their beastly and universal habit of chewing betel, would have been quite tolerable. The women appear to...

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