Episodes of Foreign Life and Manners, and Pictures of Foreign Lands (Paperback)

This historic book may have numerous typos and missing text. Purchasers can download a free scanned copy of the original book (without typos) from the publisher. Not indexed. Not illustrated. 1880. Excerpt: ... possession of its new domains. Enormous mangroves consolidate the new soil, and at the same time elevate it with their own detritus. There are now established the animals peculiar to these singular forests. One day they will disappear with the localities so well adapted to them. Future naturalists will recognise their fossil skeletons; but, aided by the labours of the learned men whom Europe honours, and by the writings of voyagers, they will not need to have recourse to cataclysms, to explain the presence of the bones of the Nasica in the midst of the miry soil of their original habitat. SCENES FROM THE HISTORY OF THE SERAGLIO. I. Description of the Building, The Seraglio of the Sultan has long been an object of curiosity to travellers, and has scarcely less excited the wonder and interest of those who "live at home at ease," content to obtain their knowledge of the outer world through the recorded labours of bolder or more fortunate spirits. The contrast between the life of woman in the West and in the East is so marked, that we need not be surprised at the existence of this universal curiosity. Among the Western nations it is woman who lends grace, animation, and amusement to our social circles, and contributes, by her presence and her everactive care, to the happiness of home. But in the East she is either a costly toy or a miserable slave, and, shut out from all intercourse with the external world, ministers to man's pleasures without sharing his confidences, and in a gilded solitude pines through the weary hours of a profitless and unhappy life. The Seraglio at Constantinople is, moreover, so jealously guarded from the intrusion of the audacious Franks, that it is seldom a visitor is admitted within its recesses. The following account of a peep "beh...