Isabella Bird
Isabella Bird
Isabella Lucy Bird, married name Bishop FRGS, was a nineteenth-century English explorer, writer, photographer and naturalist. With Fanny Jane Butler she founded the John Bishop Memorial hospital in Srinagar. She was the first woman to be elected Fellow of the Royal Geographical Society...
NationalityEnglish
ProfessionExplorer
Date of Birth15 October 1831
account attained buffalo desperate dignity gambling gigantic grand popular rare reserved source sports tiger
Cock-fighting, which has attained to the dignity of a literature of its own, is the popular Malay sport; but the grand sport is a tiger and buffalo fight, reserved for rare occasions, however, on account of its expense. Cock-fighting is a source of gigantic gambling and desperate feuds.
barbarous brutally divers flower flowers grace grotesque individuality lace piece rings series stiff
Can anything be more grotesque and barbarous than our 'florists' bouquets,' a series of concentric rings of flowers of divers colours, bordered by maidenhair and a piece of stiff lace paper, in which stems, leaves, and even petals are brutally crushed, and the grace and individuality of each flower systematically destroyed?
aboriginal besides best books chiefly close customs ground historical publish strongly urged
At the close of my visit, my Hawaiian friends urged me strongly to publish my impressions and experiences, on the ground that the best books already existing, besides being old, treat chiefly of aboriginal customs and habits now extinct, and of the introduction of Christianity and subsequent historical events.
filled foot hole puts series track
An elephant always puts his foot into the hole which another elephant's foot has made so that a frequented track is nothing but a series of pits filled with mud and water.
balancing clerk extensive frequently generally himself leg marble morning owner paper roof seated seen store supported
An American store is generally a very extensive apartment, handsomely decorated, the roof frequently supported on marble pillars. The owner or clerk is seen seated by his goods, absorbed in the morning paper - probably balancing himself on one leg of his chair, with a spittoon by his side.
above boundless broad groves lands nature suggest sweeping
Above Hilo, broad lands sweeping up cloudwards, with their sugar cane, kalo, melons, pine-apples, and banana groves suggest the boundless liberality of Nature.
hard unlike
Unlike many other places, Hilo is more fascinating on closer acquaintance - so fascinating that it is hard to write about it in plain prose.
grand herd huge rush waving wild
The rush of a herd of bellowing yaks at a wild gallop, waving their huge tails, is a grand sight.
brings man necessity turkey
Poverty brings one blessing in Turkey - the poor man is of necessity a monogamist.
domestic extremely home japanese life private
It is extremely interesting to live in a private house and to see the externalities, at least, of domestic life in a Japanese middle-class home.
acquires bitterness japanese
If Japanese tea 'stands,' it acquires a coarse bitterness and an unwholesome astringency. Milk and sugar are not used.
among european lived mode regions saw
I lived among the Japanese, and saw their mode of living, in regions unaffected by European contact.
built
Baghdad is altogether built of chrome-yellow kiln-dried bricks.
buy depends experience failure mainly personal success traveller
A traveller must buy his own experience, and success or failure depends mainly on personal idiosyncrasies.