The Temple of Melekartha (Volume 1) (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. 1831. Excerpt: ... "Duty has brought me back from the region of shining illusions to the precincts of substantial and rugged anxieties: --but let me enjoy a brief hour of recollected happiness, while I describe to you the flowery path I have lately trodden. Believe me, my friends, our Tsidonian energy and ingenuity impel us to encumber existence with too many conditions. We make happiness far too dear; and so dear, that few can pay its price. Yes; man may be blessed at a much cheaper rate. Find only a genial climate--a soil abundant, both in fruits and pasturage, and establish there a wise and beneficent system of social order, and with these means it is an easy task to accumulate all the wealth that can truly promote happiness. Such is the country whence I have returned. How bright and serene are its skies how mild and bland and gay its airs how fresh its mountain-sides and lofty plains how fragrant and luscious its valleys how fraught is every shade with dreams of delight how copious every rill and stream with the element of meditative pleasure "Ranges of mountains, not so much elevated as to afflict the valleys with wintry hurricanes, yet lofty enough to shed a temperate coolness through the land, intersect each other, and enclose many spacious plains and sequestered valleysi The sides of the hills spontaneously produce every fruit, and spice, and gum, and aromatic herb. Numerous flocks and herds find abundant sustenance on the level tracts; and especially the horse--the noblest of animals, there attains his highest perfection of form, and size, and activity, and courage; and seems, at the same time, from the gentleness of the climate, to inhale the docility of a child, and an intelligence almost human. "It must be confessed, that in the delicious land of Yemen, nat...