General Books

On the 8th or 9th of January, 1815, we proceeded, in the Princess Charlotte, Indiaman, to North-fleet Hope, and received on board our cargo. On February 28th, we sailed to Gravesend, in company with the Company's ships Ceres, Lady Melville, Rose, and Medcalfe, and arrived at the Downs on the 3d of March. Our dispatches not being expected for some time, we moored ship. Our time passed on very... more...

Through Torpedoes and Ice "Osman the Victorious," as Skobeleff called the matchless Turkish pasha, had kept the Russian hordes at bay for one hundred and forty-two days. Never in the annals of warfare had the world beheld such unexpected military genius, combined with stubborn endurance, as was shown during the siege of Plevna. On December 10th, 1877, Osman came out and made a desperate... more...

THE VOYAGE WEDNESDAY, June 26, 1754.—On this day the most melancholy sun I had ever beheld arose, and found me awake at my house at Fordhook. By the light of this sun I was, in my own opinion, last to behold and take leave of some of those creatures on whom I doted with a mother-like fondness, guided by nature and passion, and uncured and unhardened by all the doctrine of that philosophical school... more...

WE COMMISSION OUR SHIP.  VISIT PORTSMOUTH.  PREPARE TO SAIL. On one of those delicious semi-tropical afternoons, which geologists tell us once bathed the whole of our island, and which even now, as though loath to part from its one-time home, still dwells lovingly in Devonia's summer, I wended my way to Devonport Park to feast my eyes once again on the familiar scenes of early days. What I... more...

ACROSS EUROPE Stockholm to Berlin Our journey begins at Stockholm, the capital of my native country. Leaving Stockholm by train in the evening, we travel all night in comfortable sleeping-cars and arrive next morning at the southernmost point of Sweden, the port of Trelleborg, where the sunlit waves sweep in from the Baltic Sea. Here we might expect to have done with railway travelling, and we rather... more...

INTRODUCTION Among the many didactic books which flooded England in the sixteenth and seventeenth centuries were certain essays on travel. Some of these have never been brought to light since their publication more than three hundred years ago, or been mentioned by the few writers who have interested themselves in the literature of this subject. In the collections of voyages and explorations, so often... more...

INTRODUCTION Nearly five years elapsed between Drake's return from his Famous Voyage and the despatch of the formidable armament commemorated in the following pages. During the last of these years the march of events had been remarkably rapid. Gilbert, who had been empowered by Elizabeth, in the year of Frobisher's last expedition, to found colonies in America, had sailed for that purpose to... more...

CHAPTER I.CTCE. H, 505; H, 484; P, 340; N, 326;E, 146; C, 100; S, 50.Hanno, the Carthaginian—Herodotus visits Egypt, Lybia, Ethiopia, Phoenicia, Arabia, Babylon, Persia, India, Media, Colchis, the Caspian Sea, Scythia, Thrace, and Greece—Pytheas explores the coasts of Iberia and Gaul, the English Channel, the Isle of Albion, the Orkney Islands, and the land of Thule—Nearchus visits the Asiatic... more...

INTRODUCTION Birdseye Views of Far Lands is an interesting, wholesome presentation of something that a keen-eyed, alert traveler with the faculty of making contrasts with all classes of people in all sorts of places, in such a sympathetic way as to win their esteem and confidence, has been able to pick up as he has roamed over the face of the earth for a quarter of a century. The book is not a... more...

BEING THE SECOND BOOK OF HIS HISTORIES CALLED EUTERPE When Cyrus had brought his life to an end, Cambyses received the royal power in succession, being the son of Cyrus and of Cassandane the daughter of Pharnaspes, for whose death, which came about before his own, Cyrus had made great mourning himself and also had proclaimed to all those over whom he bore rule that they should make mourning for her:... more...