Sinners and Saints: A Tour Across the States and Round Them, with Three Months Among the MormonsRobinson, Phil
General
Sinners and Saints: A Tour Across the States and Round Them, with Three Months Among the Mormons
Robinson, Phil
Latter Day Saint churches; Utah -- Description and travel; West (U.S.) -- Description and travel
But it can nowhere be enjoyed in such perfection as in London. There,
emphatically, is the world's market; and written large upon the
pavement of her gigantic docks is the whole Romance of Trade. A single
shed holds the products of all the Continents; and what a book it would
be that told us of the strange industries of foreign lands! Who cut
that ebony and that iron-wood in the Malayan forests? and how came
these palm-nuts here from the banks of the Niger? Mustard from India,
and coffee-berries from Ceylon lie together to be crushed under one
boot, and here at one step you can tread on the chili-pods of Jamaica
and the pea-nuts of America. That rat that ran by was a thing from
Morocco; this squashed scorpion, perhaps, began life in Cyprus or in
Bermuda. Queer little stowaways of insect life are here in abundance,
the parasites of Egyptian lentils or of Indian corn. The mosquito
natives of Bengal swamps are brought here, it may be, in teakwood
from some drift on the Burman coast. All the world's produce is in
convention together. Here stands a great pyramid of horned skulls, the
owners of which once rampaged on Brazilian pampas, or the prairies of
the Platte River, and hard by them lie piled a multitude of hides that
might have fitted the owners of those skulls, had it not been that
they once clothed the bodies of cattle that grazed out their lives in
Australia. Juxtaposition of packages here means nothing. It does not
argue any previous affinities. This ship happens to be discharging
Norwegian pine, in which the capercailzies have roosted, and for want
of space the logs are being piled on to sacks of ginger from the
West Indies. Next them there happens to-day to be cutch from India;
to-morrow there may be gamboge from Siam, or palm oil from the Gold
Coast. These men here are trundling in great casks of Spanish wine that
have been to the Orient for their health; but an hour ago they were
wheeling away chests of Assam tea, and in another hour may be busy with
logwood from the Honduras forests. One of them is all white on the
shoulders with sacks of American wheat flour, but his hands are stained
all the same with Bengal turmeric, and he is munching as he goes a
cardamum from the Coromandel coast. What a book it would make--this
World's Work!
And then back through this city of prodigious bustle, through fine
streets with masses of solid buildings that stand upon a site which,
a few years ago, was barren sea-sand, and some of it, too, actually
sea-beach swept by the waves!
Public-domain text, read in full here on John Shaqi.
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