Up the Orinoco and Down the Magdalena

Front Cover
D. Appleton, 1910 - Colombia - 439 pages
 

Other editions - View all

Common terms and phrases

Popular passages

Page 377 - O'er the glad waters of the dark blue sea, Our thoughts as boundless, and our souls as free, Far as the breeze can bear, the billows foam, Survey our empire, and behold our home!
Page 46 - This is the ship of pearl, which, poets feign, Sails the unshadowed main, — The venturous bark that flings On the sweet summer wind its purpled wings In gulfs enchanted, where the siren sings, And coral reefs lie bare, Where the cold sea-maids rise to sun their streaming hair. Its webs of living gauze no more unfurl; Wrecked is the ship of pearl ! And every chambered cell, Where its dim dreaming life was wont to dwell, As the frail tenant shaped his growing shell, Before thee lies revealed, —...
Page 183 - Whip-poor-Will,' from the goatsucker, causes such astonishment as the toll of the campanero. "With many of the feathered race, he pays the common tribute of a morning and an evening song ; and even when the meridian sun has shut in silence the mouths of almost the whole of animated nature, the campanero still cheers the forest. You hear his toll, and then a pause for a minute, then another toll, and then a pause again, and then a toll, and again a pause.
Page 49 - In contemplating such a life as that of Las Casas, all words of eulogy seem weak and frivolous. The historian can only bow in reverent awe before a figure which is in some respects the most beautiful and sublime in the annals of Christianity since the Apostolic age. When now and then in the course of the centuries God's providence brings such a life into this world, the memory of it must be cherished by mankind as one of its most precious and sacred possessions.
Page 71 - I know all the earth doth not yield the like confluence of streams and branches, the one crossing the other so many times, and all so fair and large, and so like one to another, as no man can tell which to take...
Page 228 - To sit on rocks, to muse o'er flood and fell, To slowly trace the forest's shady scene, Where things that own not man's dominion dwell, And mortal foot hath ne'er or rarely been ; To climb the trackless mountain all unseen, With the wild flock that never needs a fold ; Alone o'er steeps and foaming falls to lean ; This is not solitude ; 'tis but to hold Converse with Nature's charms, and view her stores unroll'd.
Page 79 - Indus' smiling banks the rosy shower : All, at this bounteous season, ope their urns, And pour untoiling harvest o'er the land. Nor less thy world, Columbus, drinks refresh'd, The lavish moisture of the melting year. Wide o'er his isles, the branching Oronoque Rolls a brown deluge ; and the native drives To dwell aloft on life-sufficing trees ; At once his dome, his robe, his food, and arms.
Page 169 - Fillet of a fenny snake, In the cauldron boil and bake : Eye of newt, and toe of frog, Wool of bat, and tongue of dog...
Page 84 - Learned naturalists describe these scenes of the tropics by naming a multitude of objects, and mentioning some characteristic feature of each. To a learned traveller, this possibly may communicate some definite ideas: but who else from seeing a plant in an herbarium can imagine its appearance when growing in its native soil? Who from seeing choice plants in a hothouse can magnify some into the dimensions of forest trees, and crowd others into an entangled jungle?
Page 213 - When it raineth, it is his pent-house; when it bloweth it is his tent; when it freezeth, it is his tabernacle. In summer he can wear it loose, in winter he can wrap it close; at all times he can use it, never heavy, never cumbersome.

Bibliographic information