In his enumeration of the chief points of attraction in the more
striking books of voyages and travels, Leigh Hunt, with his happy
appreciation of whatever is most quaint in description, most
sympathetic in impression, has helped us to an arrangement, which, with
a convenient modification of our own, we shall follow congenially. We
shall seek for remoteness and obscurity of place,--marvellousness of
hearsay,--surprising, but conceivable truth,--barbaric magnificence,--
the grotesque and the fantastic,--strangeness of custom,--personal
danger, courage, and suffering,--and their barbaric consolations.
In the pursuit of these, our path should wind, had we time to take
the longest, among deserts and lands of darkness,--phoenixes and
griffins and sphinxes,--human monsters, and more monstrous gods,--the
courts of Akbhar and Aurengzebe,--palaces of the Mogul and the Kathayan
Khan,--pigmies, monkey-gods, mummies, Fakeers, dancing-girls, tattooed
warriors, Thugs, cannibals, Fetishes, human sacrifices, and the Evil
Eye,--Chinese politeness, Bedouin honor, Bechuana simplicity,--the plague,
the _amok_, the bearding of lions, the graves of hero-travellers, flowers
in the desert, and the universal tenderness of women.
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