Adventures of the Ojibbeway and Ioway Indians in England, France, and Belgium; Vol. 1 (of 2): being Notes of Eight Years' Travels and Residence in Europe with his North American Indian CollectionCatlin, George
History
Adventures of the Ojibbeway and Ioway Indians in England, France, and Belgium; Vol. 1 (of 2): being Notes of Eight Years' Travels and Residence in Europe with his North American Indian Collection
Catlin, George
England -- Description and travel; France -- Description and travel; Indians of North America
I observed, in passing several equestrian and other statues in the
streets, that they were all black; which seemed curious; and also,
in every street, I saw what was new to me, and not to be seen in
the streets of the American cities--meat-shops and fishmongers
indiscriminately mingled along the same side-walks with dry
goods--hosiers, china, and hardware--and fancy shops; and also
performed the whole route, outward and homeward, without having seen
a solitary pig ploughing the gutters, as we too familiarly meet them
in many of the American cities, though the gutters, much of the way,
would seem to have offered a tolerably rich field for their geological
researches.
I met with evidences enough, however, that I was not out of the land of
pigs, though they were not seen promenading or ploughing the streets.
I passed several shops, all open in front, where poor piggies were
displayed in a much less independent way--hanging by their hind legs
at full length, and the blood dripping from their noses upon the
sills of the shops and pavements, to amuse the eyes of the silken and
dazzling throng that was squeezing and brushing along by them; and
whilst I easily decided which was the most cruel to the poor brutes, I
was much at a loss to decide which mode was calculated to be the most
shocking to the nerves that would be weak enough to be offended by
either.
I was thus at the end of my first day's rambles in London, without at
present recollecting any other occurrences worthy of note, excepting
a little annoyance I had felt by discovering with my left eye, while
walking in the street, something like a small black spot on the side
of my nose, which, by endeavouring many times to remove by the brush
of my hand across it, I had evidently greatly enlarged, and which,
when I returned, I examined and found to have been at first, in all
probability, a speck of soot which had alighted there, and by passing
my hand over it had, as in other instances, on other parts of my face,
mashed it down and given it somewhat the shape and tail of a comet, or
the train of a falling star, though differing materially in brilliancy
and colour.
I used the rest of this gloomy day in obtaining from the Lords of
the Treasury the proper order for passing my collection through the
Customs, which has been before mentioned, arranging my letters of
credit, &c., and returned by the evening's train to Liverpool, to join
my collection again, and Daniel and the grizly bears.
Public-domain text, read in full here on John Shaqi.
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