Blackwood's Edinburgh Magazine, Vol. 63, No. 390, April, 1848Various
History
Blackwood's Edinburgh Magazine, Vol. 63, No. 390, April, 1848
Various
England -- Periodicals; Scotland -- Periodicals
emulous of the Lesbian Sappho, would doubtless find them suitable to the
nefarious purpose of breaking his neck. This is all I can say for them;
and as for the fishing excursion, we soon gave it up, and paddled back
to the quay, out of patience with Freke for his instructions in Indian
philology, and heartily tired of attempting to catch fish in
Kaw-ko-kaw-na.
Freke, for once in his life, had been employed to some purpose. He met
us on the quay, and immediately conducted us to a gay little sloop, to
which he had already transferred our luggage, and which was ready for a
start down the lake to Plattsburgh. We were introduced to a raw-boned,
barethroated Vermonter as “Captain Pusher,” and, ratifying the bargain
of our commissary, were soon snugly on board his vessel; of which I
regret that I forget the name, though I distinctly remember the letters
that shone on the painted sterns we passed—such as the Macdonough, the
Congress, the Green-Mountain-Boy, and the Lady of the Lake. Whatever was
its name, its deck contained several baskets of vegetables and joints of
meat, which gave us promise of a good dinner; and scarcely were we under
weigh, before Sambo the cook began to pare turnips, and grin from ear to
ear over savoury collops of mutton, which he was submitting to some
incipient process of cookery.
We were favoured with a good breeze; but the channel of which I have
spoken seemed to drag its length like an Alexandrine. We reached a place
where it is so narrow, and makes an angle so abrupt, that there is a
contrivance on the bank which steamers are obliged to employ in turning.
It is best described by the name which has been given to it by the
sailors, from
“A pigmy scraper wi’ his fiddle,
Wha used at tryste and fairs to driddle,
Wi’ hand on haunch, and upward e’e.”
They call it the Fiddler’s Elbow; and as it seems the limit of
Whitehall, we were glad to double the cape as speedily as possible. A
squadron of ducks that were puddling in the dirty water of the marshes
gave point to a quotation from Voltaire, with which one of our company
paid his parting compliments to _Kaw-ko-kaw-na_, as its author did to
Holland—_Adieu! canards, canailles, canaux._
Public-domain text, read in full here on John Shaqi.
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