Round the North Hemisphere, 1878-1879 (Paperback)

Purchase of this book includes free trial access to www.million-books.com where you can read more than a million books for free. This is an OCR edition with typos. Excerpt from book: CHAPTER IV. October 23rd, Wednesday. To-day does indeed deserve to be commemorated in a full, true, and particular account, if it serve only to recall or to quicken in the future my own happy recollections, I write it during my first evening in camp, with very keen enjoyment in the present, and with, it seems (in spite of the camp dog, which is making a tremendous row outside, in his disgust at distant jackals), a very bright and enviable prospect. How intensely B. or O. would have enjoyed it, if either of them could have shared it with me! The day began with a splendid header in the early morning, from a new and even better bathing shed, not very far from the hotel. The water so clear and transparent that you could see the minutest object down below; the boats at a little distance seeming to be resting on the surface, poised on the water as if on air; the distant mountains clear and distinct, yet rising against the sky in truer height to-day, owing to fleecy clouds stealing across some of the ravines, and with the artist's touches revealing both height and distance. Swimming gently, with a delightful returning sense of coolness and refreshment, as I watched this, I was strongly reminded of a similar never-to-be-forgotten bathe which I had some years ago in the Lake of Geneva, with Mont Blanc then for my Lebanon. I had arranged yesterday to start at 7.30. "Yes! everything should be ready." Delusion: it was 10.30 before we started. No use trying to hurry other men's cattle?especially muleteers, on the first day. Meanwhile, however, I was greatly interested in the manoeuvres of a naked Arab fisherman, whom I watched from the hotel balcony. He was literally " stalking" fish?wading knee-deep, waist-deep, shoulder-deep, then quietly emerging on to a rock, stooping low and stea...