Letters of George Borrow to the British and Foreign Bible SocietyBorrow, George
Religion
Letters of George Borrow to the British and Foreign Bible Society
Borrow, George
Authors, English -- 19th century -- Correspondence; British and Foreign Bible Society; English letters
REVD. AND DEAR SIR,--I arrived at Hamburg yesterday after a disagreeable
passage of three days, in which I suffered much from sea-sickness, as did
all the other passengers, who were a medley of Germans, Swedes, and
Danes, I being the only Englishman on board, with the exception of the
captain and crew. I landed about seven o'clock in the morning, and the
sun, notwithstanding the earliness of the hour, shone so fiercely that it
brought upon me a transient fit of delirium, which is scarcely to be
wondered at, if my previous state of exhaustion be considered. You will
readily conceive that my situation, under all its circumstances, was not
a very enviable one; some people would perhaps call it a frightful one.
I did not come however to the slightest harm, for the Lord took care of
me through two of His instruments, Messrs. Weil and Valentin, highly
respectable Jews of Copenhagen, who had been my fellow-passengers, and
with whom I had in some degree ingratiated myself on board, in our
intervals of ease, by conversing with them about the Talmud and the book
Sohar. They conveyed me to the Konig von Engeland, an excellent hotel in
the street called the Neuenwall, and sent for a physician, who caused me
to take forty drops of laudanum and my head to be swathed in wet towels,
and afterwards caused me to be put to bed, where I soon fell asleep, and
awoke in the evening perfectly recovered and in the best spirits
possible. This morning, Sunday, I called on the British Consul, Mr. H.
Canning, to whom I had a letter of recommendation. He received me with
great civility, and honoured me with an invitation to dine with him
to-morrow, which I of course accepted. He is a highly intelligent man,
and resembles strikingly in person his illustrious relative, the late
George Canning. Since visiting him I have been to one of the five tall
churches which tower up above the tall houses; I thought its interior
very venerable and solemn, but the service seemed to be nothing more than
a low-muttered chanting, from which it was impossible to derive much
spiritual edification. There was no sermon, and not more than twenty
persons were present, though the edifice would contain thousands
conveniently. Hamburg is a huge place, and the eastern part of it is
intersected by wide canals communicating with the Elbe, so that vessels
find their way into most parts of the city; the bridges are consequently
very numerous, and are mostly of wood. Some of the streets are planted
with trees, which have a pretty appearance, though upon the whole it has
certainly no claim to the appellation of a handsome town. But no
observer can fail to be struck with the liveliness and bustle which reign
in this emporium of continental Europe, worthy to be compared with Tyre
of old or our own Liverpool. Another city adjoins it called Altona, the
park of which and the environs are the favourite Sunday lounge of the
Hamburgers. Altona is in Holstein, which belongs to the Danish
Government.
Public-domain text, read in full here on John Shaqi.
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