Celebrated Women Travellers of the Nineteenth CenturyAdams, W. H. Davenport (William Henry Davenport)
History
Celebrated Women Travellers of the Nineteenth Century
Adams, W. H. Davenport (William Henry Davenport)
Women travelers -- Biography
From China our adventurous lady sailed for the East Indies, "looking in"
on the way at Singapore, a British settlement, which forms the
meeting-place of the traders of South Asia. The scenery around it is of
a rich and agreeable character, and the island on which it is situated
excels in fertility of vegetation. Very pleasant the visitor finds it,
to saunter among the plantations of cloves and nutmegs, the air
breathing a peculiar balsamic fragrance, a concentration of sweet
odours. Pepper and gambie plantations are also among the sights of
Singapore. Further, it is an island of fruits. Here thrives the
delectable mangosteno, which almost melts in the mouth, and enchants the
palate with its exquisite flavour. Here, too, the pine-apple frequently
attains the weight of four pounds. Here grows the saucroys, as big as
the biggest pine-apple, green outside, and white or pale yellow inside,
with a taste and perfume like that of the strawberry. And to Singapore
belongs the custard-apple, which is as savoury as its compound name
implies.
From Singapore, Madame Pfeiffer crossed to Point de Galle, in Ceylon.
The charming appearance of this island from the sea moved her, as it
moves every traveller, to admiration. "It was one of the most
magnificent sights I ever beheld," she says, "that island soaring
gradually from the sea, with its mountain ranges growing more and more
distinctly defined, their summits lighted by the sun, while the dense
cocoa-groves, and the hills, and the plains lay shrouded in cool
shadows." Above the whole towers the purple mass of Adam's Peak, and
wherever the eye roams, it surveys the most prodigal foliage, and glades
rich in verdure, and turfy slopes deep in flowers.
Point de Galle presents a curious mixture of races. Cingalese,
Kanditores, Tamils from South India, and Moormans, with crimson caftans
and shaven crowns, form the bulk of the crowd that throng its streets;
but, besides these, there are Portuguese, Chinese, Jews, Arabs, Parsees,
Malays, Dutchmen, English, with half-caste burghers, and now and then a
veiled Arab woman, or a Veddah, one of the aboriginal inhabitants of the
island. Sir Charles Dilke speaks of "silent crowds of tall and graceful
girls, as we at first supposed, wearing white petticoats and bodices,
their hair carried off the face with a decorated hoop, and caught at the
back by a high tortoise-shell comb. As they drew near, moustaches began
to show, and I saw that they were men, whilst walking with them were
women naked to the waist, combless, and far more rough and 'manly' than
their husbands. Petticoats and chignons are male institutions in
Ceylon."
Public-domain text, read in full here on John Shaqi.
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