The Strange Adventures of Captain Dangerous, Vol. 2: Who was a sailor, a soldier, a merchant, a spy, a slave; among the moors...Sala, George Augustus
General
The Strange Adventures of Captain Dangerous, Vol. 2: Who was a sailor, a soldier, a merchant, a spy, a slave; among the moors...
Sala, George Augustus
Adventure and adventurers -- Fiction
banished to the Galleys, there to be chained to the Oar for life. A fine
Encouragement truly for those who think that, for good Victuals and a
Fine Livery, they are bound to obey all the Humours and Caprices, even
to the most Unreasonable and most Arbitrary, of their Masters and
Mistresses.
We were in no great Mood, after this Affair was over, to remain in
Vienna. Mr. Pinchin did at first purpose journeying through the Province
of Styria by Gratz, to a little town on the sea-coast, called
Trieste,--that has much grown in importance during these latter
days,--and so crossing the Gulf to Venice; but he abandoned this Scheme.
His health was visibly breaking; his Funds, he said, were running low;
he was more anxious about his Mamma than ever; and 'twas easy to see
that he was half-weary and half-afraid of the Chaplain and Myself, and
that he desired nothing Half so Much as to get Rid of us Both. So we
packed up, and resumed our Wanderings, but in Retreat instead of
Advance. We passed, coming back, through Dresden, where there are some
fine History Pictures, and close to which the Saxon Elector had set up a
great Factory for the making of painted Pottery Ware: not after the
monstrous Chinese Fashion, but rather after the Mode practised with
great Success at our own Chelsea. The manner of making this Pottery was,
however, kept a high State Secret by the government of the then Saxon
Elector; and no strangers were, on any pretence, admitted to the place
where the Works were carried on; so of this we saw nothing: and not
Sorry was I of the privation, being utterly Wearied and palled with much
gadding about and Sight-seeing. So post to Frankfort, where there were a
many Jews; and thence to Mayence; and from thence down the grand old
River Rhine to the City of Cologne; whence, by the most lagging stages I
did ever know, to Bruxelles. But we stayed not here to see the
sights--not even the droll little statue of the Mannikin (at the corner
of a street, in a most improper attitude; and there is a Group quite as
unseemly in one of the Markets, so I was told, although at that time we
were fain to pass them by), which Mannikin the burgesses of Bruxelles
regard as a kind of tutelary Divinity, and set much greater store by
than do we by our London Stone, or Little Naked Boy in Panyer Alley. But
it is curious to mark what strange fanteagues these Foreigners run mad
after.
Public-domain text, read in full here on John Shaqi.
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