I could tell tales from the later, not less
than from the older travellers, that would send my readers shuddering
to sleepless beds: the ferocities of Tippoo reenacted in the name of
Nena Sahib; the noiseless murders of Thuggee's nimble cord; the drunken
_diablerie_ of the Doorga Pooja; the monstrous human sacrifices of the
Khonds and Bheels; the dreadful rites of the Janni before the gory
altar of the Earth goddess; the indiscriminate slashing and stabbing of
the Amok; the shuddering dodges of the plague-chased Cavrite; the grim
and lonely duels of the French lion-killer under the melancholy stars;
the carrion-like exposures of the Parsee dead; the nightmarish legends
of the Evil Eye. But my hope is to part with them on pleasant terms; so
rather would I strew their pillows with the consolations of this
many-mooded Barbaric,--moss from ruins, and pretty flowers from the
desert,--that beneficent botany which maketh the wilderness to blossom
like the rose.
When Mungo Park, deserted by his guides, and stripped by thieves,
utterly paralyzed by misfortune, and misery, would have laid him down
to die in a desert place,--at that moment, of all others, the
extraordinary beauty of a small moss in fructification caught his eye.
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