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" The Malays can hardly be said to have an indigenous literature, for it is almost entirely derived from Persia, Siam, Arabia, and Java. Arabic is their sacred language. "
Isabella Bird
Language
Indigenous
Literature
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" Oahu in the distance, a group of grey, barren peaks rising verdureless out of the lonely sea, was not an exception to the rule that the first sight of land is a disappointment. "
Isabella Bird
Sea
Disappointment
Group
" Yokohama does not improve on further acquaintance. It has a dead-alive look. It has irregularity without picturesqueness, and the grey sky, grey sea, grey houses, and grey roofs, look harmoniously dull. "
Isabella Bird
Grey
Look
Without
" Americans specially love superlatives. The phrases 'biggest in the world,' 'finest in the world,' are on all lips. Unless President Hayes is a strong man, they will soon come to boast that their government is composed of the 'biggest scoundrels' in the world. "
Isabella Bird
Man
Strong
World
" If one's memories of Baghdad women were only of those to be seen in the streets, they would be of leathery, wrinkled faces, prematurely old, figures which have lost all shape, and henna-stained hands crinkled and deformed by toil. "
Isabella Bird
Lost
Women
Old
" The rush of a herd of bellowing yaks at a wild gallop, waving their huge tails, is a grand sight. "
Isabella Bird
Grand
Sight
Wild
" 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. "
Isabella Bird
Interesting
Home
Live
" The situation of Leh is a grand one, the great Kailas range, with its glaciers and snowfields, rising just behind it to the north, its passes alone reaching an altitude of nearly 18,000 feet; while to the south, across a gravelly descent and the Indus Valley, rise great red ranges dominated by snow-peaks exceeding 21,000 feet in altitude. "
Isabella Bird
Red
Situation
Great
" To a person sitting quietly at home, Rocky Mountain traveling, like Rocky Mountain scenery, must seem very monotonous; but not so to me, to whom the pure, dry mountain air is the elixir of life. "
Isabella Bird
Life
Scenery
Mountain
" The 'Desert' sweeps up to the walls of Baghdad, but it is a misnomer to call the vast level of rich, stoneless, alluvial soil a desert. It is a dead flat of uninhabited earth; orange colocynth balls, a little wormwood, and some alkaline plants which camels eat, being its chief products. After the inundations, reedy grass grows in the hollows. "
Isabella Bird
Plants
Rich
Earth
" The Americans will never solve the Indian problem till the Indian is extinct. They have treated them after a fashion which has intensified their treachery and 'devilry' as enemies, and as friends reduces them to a degraded pauperism, devoid of the very first elements of civilization. "
Isabella Bird
Problem
Friends
Civilization
" One of the most painful things in the Western States and Territories is the extinction of childhood. I have never seen any children - only debased imitations of men and women, cankered by greed and selfishness, and asserting and gaining complete independence of their parents at ten years old. "
Isabella Bird
Women
Parents
Childhood
" Writing generally, it may be said that in design, roof, and general aspect, Japanese Buddhist temples are all alike. The sacred architectural idea expresses itself in nearly the same form always. "
Isabella Bird
May
Roof
Said
" My first experiences of Colorado travel have been rather severe. At Greeley, I got a small upstairs room at first, but gave it up to a married couple with a child, and then had one downstairs no bigger than a cabin, with only a canvas partition. It was very hot, and every place was thick with black flies. "
Isabella Bird
Place
Hot
Child
" 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? "
Isabella Bird
Grace
Flower
Flowers
" The Tigris is so fierce and rapid, and swallows its alluvial banks so greedily, that it is probable that some of the buildings described by the Hebrew traveller Benjamin of Tudela as existing in the twelfth century were long since carried away. "
Isabella Bird
Long
Some
Away
" The Japanese look most diminutive in European dress. Each garment is a misfit and exaggerates the miserable physique and the national defects of concave chests and bow legs. The lack of 'complexion' and of hair upon the face makes it nearly impossible to judge of the ages of men. "
Isabella Bird
Men
Impossible
Face
" The word 'aloha,' in foreign use, has taken the place of every English equivalent. It is a greeting, a farewell, thanks, love, goodwill. Aloha looks at you from tidies and illuminations; it meets you on the roads and at house-doors. It is conveyed to you in letters: the air is full of it. "
Isabella Bird
Place
Air
Looks
" Malacca fascinates me more and more daily. There is, among other things, a mediaevalism about it. The noise of the modern world reaches it only in the faintest echoes; its sleep is almost dreamless. Its sensations seem to come out of books read in childhood. "
Isabella Bird
Daily
World
Sleep
" Baghdad is altogether built of chrome-yellow kiln-dried bricks. "
Isabella Bird
Built
Altogether
Baghdad
" Poverty brings one blessing in Turkey - the poor man is of necessity a monogamist. "
Isabella Bird
Poor Man
Blessing
Poor
" I lived among the Japanese, and saw their mode of living, in regions unaffected by European contact. "
Isabella Bird
Living
Contact
Japanese
" 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. "
Isabella Bird
Fight
Gambling
Tiger
" My first yak was fairly quiet and looked a noble steed with my Mexican saddle and gay blanket among rather than upon his thick black locks. His back seemed as broad as that of an elephant, and with his slow, sure, resolute step, he was like a mountain in motion. "
Isabella Bird
Black
Elephant
Gay
" On the whole, I find that it is best to adopt as far as possible the travelling equipments of the country in which one travels. The muleteers and servants understand them better, and if anything goes wrong or wears out, it can be repaired or replaced. "
Isabella Bird
Find
Country
Better
" Everyone acknowledges that dinner parties are equally dull in London and Paris, in Calcutta and in New York, unless the next neighbour happens to be peculiarly agreeable. "
Isabella Bird
Paris
London
New
" Unlike many other places, Hilo is more fascinating on closer acquaintance - so fascinating that it is hard to write about it in plain prose. "
Isabella Bird
Acquaintance
Write
Places
" The breadfruit is a superb tree, about 60 feet high, with deep green, shining leaves, a foot broad, sharply and symmetrically cut, worthy, from their exceeding beauty of form, to take the place of the acanthus in architectural ornament, and throwing their pale green fruit into delicate contrast. "
Isabella Bird
Fruit
Beauty
Deep
" Other lands may have their charms, and the sunny skies of other climes may be regretted, but it is with pride and gladness that the wanderer sets foot again on British soil, thanking God for the religion and the liberty which have made this weather-beaten island in a northern sea to be the light and glory of the world. "
Isabella Bird
Religion
World
Sea
" 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. "
Isabella Bird
Now
Treat
Me
" Four hours after leaving Kornah, we passed the reputed tomb of Ezra the prophet. At a distance and in the moonlight it looked handsome. There is a buttressed river wall, and above it some long flat-roofed buildings, the centre one surmounted by a tiled dome. "
Isabella Bird
Distance
Leaving
River