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European Acquaintance; Being Sketches of People in Europe
European Acquaintance Being Sketches of People in Europe Author:John William De Forest General Books publication date: 2009 Original publication date: 1858 Original Publisher: Harper Subjects: Europe Travel / Europe / General Travel / Europe / Great Britain Notes: This is a black and white OCR reprint of the original. It has no illustrations and there may be typos or missing text. When you buy the General Books edition ... more »of this book you get free trial access to Million-Books.com where you can select from more than a million books for free. Excerpt: CHAPTER III. VENICE TO GRAEFENBEBG. A Tolerable steam-boat carried us to Trieste, which I observed to be a newish city, affluent in ships and store-houses, and lively with a rapid circulation of dust and people about its broad streets. In freshness, movement, and an appearance of growth, it reminded me of Marseilles, and even of sea-port towns in my own flourishing country. Coming in late at night, we got so little sleep that it was hardly worth taking, and by ten in the morning were bundled off in a rickety, uncomfortable omnibus for Vienna. A few hours of leisurely ascent brought us into one of the most beautiful highland districts in the world, full of abrupt turfy hills, rocky precipices, dells spotted with thickets, lucent rivulets, endless diversifications of feature in short, all shaded into fine variety by an abounding verdure of dark, tapering firs, exactly suited in color and contour to the Alpine character of the scenery. I would describe this lovely land more minutely, but that I was crushed by sleep, and rode through a large portion of it with closed eyes, and mouth perhaps open; so that I have only an indistinct recollection of its sharply-sketched landscapes, as if I had seen them through a mist, or a pair of some grandmother's spectacles. Once, as my head jolted about unpleasantly, I partially awoke, and stuck itthrough a strap which depended from the roof of the vehicle for the support of passengers' elbows. There it hung an hour or two, like a head cut off for a trophy, until I a...« less