Journal of a Tour in the Years 1828-1829, through Styria, Carniola, and Italy, whilst Accompanying the Late Sir Humphry DavyTobin, J. J.
History
Journal of a Tour in the Years 1828-1829, through Styria, Carniola, and Italy, whilst Accompanying the Late Sir Humphry Davy
Tobin, J. J.
Davy, Humphry, Sir, 1778-1829; Europe -- Description and travel
_16th._ Sir Humphry did not feel well enough to-day to accompany the
fishermen, but desired them to bring him any fish they might catch;
they accordingly brought him a schill, the large perch of the Danube,
(_Perca lucioperca_, BLOCK,) of which Sir Humphry begged me
to take a drawing. We then dissected it, and afterwards had it dressed
for dinner, and both of us thought it very good, and much resembling
cod in taste. Sir Humphry now generally prefers dining alone, and at a
late hour for this part of the world, (four o'clock); and I, therefore,
where I find a _table d'hôte_, usually dine at it; for though the
business of eating in this country is not one of hasty dispatch,
or of such trivial importance as to leave all the powers awake to
conversation, yet foreigners who wish to become acquainted with the
people and manners, as well as to see them, will, at all events,
understand them much better by mixing with them, than by keeping, as is
so often the case with English travellers, to their own rooms. While
Sir Humphry dined, I took a walk up the Schellenberg, to look at the
spot from which Marlborough drove the French at the celebrated battle
of Blenheim; and sitting under an old oak, on the top of the hill, I
enjoyed the extensive view beneath me. Hardly visible in the distance
appeared the towers of Blenheim; nearer stood many a small village,
embosomed as it were in the forests; and the Danube, winding through
the woods and verdant meadows, now hidden by an interposing hill,
then again appearing in many a bending curve, with here and there a
small green island, flowed tranquilly on till it reaches the town of
Donauwörth, where it receives the tributary waters of the Wernitz, a
small river which runs through the town. I hastily took a sketch of the
view, the scene of actions which can never be forgotten by the friend
of English glory, and then returned to Sir Humphry, and in the evening
read to him some of the "Arabian Nights," and Dryden's beautiful poem
"The Flower and the Leaf."
Public-domain text, read in full here on John Shaqi.
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