Roraima and British Guiana: With a Glance at Bermuda, the West Indies, and the Spanish MainHurst and Blackett, 1879 - 363 pages |
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Common terms and phrases
appearance arrived ascended banks Barbadoes beautiful Bermuda birds blue boats boundaries Britain British Guiana bush Cako called camp canoe Caracas cassava Ciudad Bolivar coast colour cottages crew crimson crossed Cumaná Cuyuni dark deep Demerara distance Essequibo falls feet fish flowers forest formed French Guiana garden Georgetown Government green ground hammocks heard hills houses Indians island journey La Guaira land leaves looked Martinique Mazaruni Mazaruni River McTurk miles morning Moroco mountain natives negro never night occupied Orinoco palms Panama passed passengers path picturesque Port of Spain pretty Puerto Cabello rain ravine reached rise river road rock rocky Roraima savanna scene scenery seen shore side soon Spain species steamer stream stretch territory tion town trees Trinidad tropical valley Venezuela village walk walls West Indies whilst wooded woodskins yellow
Popular passages
Page 66 - Not a flower to be pressed of the foot that falls not; As the heart of a dead man the seed-plots are dry; From the thicket of thorns whence the nightingale calls not, Could she call, there were never a rose to reply. Over the meadows that blossom and wither Rings but the note of a sea-bird's song; . , Only the sun and the rain come hither All year long.
Page 139 - Caora are a nation of people, whose heads appear not above their shoulders ; which, though it may be thought a mere fable, yet for mine own part I am resolved it is true, because every child in the provinces of Arromaia and Canuri affirm the same : they are called Ewaipanoma : they are reported to have their eyes in their shoulders, and their mouths in the middle of their breasts, and that a long train of hair groweth backward between their shoulders.
Page 9 - PLEASANT it was, when woods were green, And winds were soft and low, To lie amid some sylvan scene, Where, the long drooping boughs between, Shadows dark and sunlight sheen Alternate come and go ; Or where the denser grove receives No sunlight from above, But the dark foliage interweaves In one unbroken roof of leaves, Underneath whose sloping eaves The shadows hardly move. Beneath some patriarchal tree I lay upon the ground...
Page 320 - It is true,' said Gomara to the Emperor, ' that mountains obstruct these passes, but if there are mountains, there are also hands. Let but the resolve be made, there will be no want of means ; the Indies, to which the passage will be made, will supply them. To a King of Spain, with the wealth of the Indies at his command, when the object to be attained is the spice trade, what is possible is easy.
Page 119 - I saw a large cayman rush out of the river, seize a man, and carry him down, before anybody had it in his power to assist him. The screams of the poor fellow were terrible as the cayman was running off with him. He plunged into the river with his prey ; we instantly lost sight of him, and never saw or heard him more.
Page vi - Will no one explore Roraima, and bring us back the tidings which it has been waiting these thousands of years to give us?
Page 14 - Wherever you wander the sea is in sight, With its changeable turquoise green and blue, And its strange transparence of limpid light. You can watch the work that the Nereids do, Down, down, where their purple fans unfurl, Planting their coral and sowing their pearl.
Page 226 - About half way up we met an unpleasant-looking Indian who informed us that he was a great 'peaiman,' and the spirit which he possessed ordered us not to go to Roraima. The mountain, he said, was guarded by an enormous 'camoodi,' which could entwine a hundred people in its folds.
Page 321 - In order to give facility to the great object of the government I intend to possess the Lake of Nicaragua, which for the present may be looked upon as the inland Gibraltar of Spanish America. As it commands the only water pass between the oceans, its situation must ever render it a principal post to insure passage to the Southern Ocean, and by our possession of it Spanish America is divided in two.
Page 293 - Tactic, movements, and manoeuvre, are as unknown to him as to the lowest of his troops. All idea of regularity, system, or the common routine of an army, or even a regiment, he is totally unacquainted with. Hence arise all the disasters he meets, the defeats he suffers, and his constant obligations to retreat whenever opposed to the foe.