Isabella Bird Quotes

I have found a dream of beauty at which one might look all one's life and sigh.

Truly a good horse, good ground to gallop on, and sunshine, make up the sum of enjoyable travelling.

Everything suggests a beyond.

I sat down and knitted for some time - my usual resource under discouraging circumstances.

I still vote civilization a nuisance, society a humbug and all conventionality a crime.

There is also a dog, but he does not understand English,

Yet, after all, they were not bad souls; and though he failed so grotesquely, he did his incompetent best.

As they spoke, a warm spring breeze caused rose petals to swirl about the courtyard. The fountain gurgled, and birdsong filled the air, as birds flew over the courtyard.

people live more happily than any that I have seen elsewhere.  It is very cheerful to live among people whose faces are not soured by the east wind, or wrinkled by the worrying effort to “keep up appearances,” which deceive nobody;

It is a strange life up here on the mountain side, but I like it, and never yearn after civilization. 

The scarcely audible whisper of soft airs through the trees morning and evening, rain drops falling gently, and the murmur of drowsy surges far below, alone break the stillness. 

Oh! To be beyond the pale once more, out of civilization into savagery? I abhor civilization!

In traveling, there is nothing like dissecting people's statements, which are usually colored by their estimate of the powers or likings of the person spoken to, making all reasonable inquiries, and then pertinaciously but quietly carrying out one's own plans.

Methane emissions are lower in biodiverse pasture systems largely because of fumaric acid – a compound that scientists at the Rowett Institute in Aberdeen identified as leading to faster growth and reducing emissions of methane by 70 per cent when added to the diet of lambs. Fumaric acid occurs widely in many plants and herbs of the field and hedgerow, including angelica, common fumitory, shepherd’s purse and bird’s-foot trefoil.

I dreamt of bears so vividly that I woke with a furry death hug at my throat, but feeling quite refreshed.

Isabella had been a bright bird flying into my drab hall and I was a puppy staring at it, wanting it but not knowing what I would do if I ever caught it.

A little longer, and I too should say, like all who have made their homes here under the deep banana shade,--            “We will return no more,     . . . . our island home     Is far beyond the wave, we will no longer roam.

For the benefit of other lady travelers, I wish to explain that my "Hawaiian riding dress" is the "American Lady's Mountain Dress," a half-fitting jacket, a skirt reaching to the ankles, and full Turkish trousers gathered into frills falling over the boots,—a thoroughly serviceable and feminine costume for mountaineering and other rough traveling, as in the Alps or any other part of the world. I. L. B. (Author's note to the second edition, November 27, 1879.) Once

Americans specially love superlatives. The phrases "biggest in the world", "finest in the world", are on all lips. Unless president Hayes is a strong manthey will soon come to boast that their government is composed of the "biggest scoundrels" in the world.

One of the most painful things in the Western States and Territories is the extinction of childhood. I have never seen any children, only debased imitations of men and women, cankered by greed and selfishness, and asserting and gaining complete independence of their parents at ten years old. The atmosphere in which they are brought up is one of greed, godlessness, and frequently of profanity.

By sunlight or moonlight, its splintered grey crest is the one object which, in spire of wapitu and bighorn, skunk and grizzli, unfailingly arrests the eyes. From it come all storms of snow and wind, and the forked lightnings play around its head like a glory. It is one of he noblest of mountains, but in one's imagination it grows to be much more than a mountain. It becomes invested with a personality.

nolens volens, dragged me along with a patience

Birdie amuses every one with her funny ways. She always follows me closely, and to-day got quite into a house and pushed the parlor door open. She walks after me with her head laid on my shoulder, licking my face and teasing me for sugar, and sometimes, when any one else takes hold of her, she rears and kicks, and the vicious bronco soul comes into her eyes.

week, yet it all goes somehow. He has a most industrious wife, a girl of seventeen, and four younger children, all musical, but the wife has to work like a slave; and though he is a kind husband, her lot, as compared with her lord's, is like that of a squaw.

Lady’s Life in the Rocky Mountains, by an Englishwoman named Isabella Bird.

One of the most painful things in the Western States and Territories is the extinction of childhood. I have never seen any children, only debased imitations of men and women, cankered by greed and selfishness, and asserting and gaining complete independence of their parents at ten years old.

These new settlements are altogether revolting, entirely utilitarian, given up to talk of dollars as well as to making them, with coarse speech, coarse food, coarse everything, nothing wherewith to satisfy the higher cravings if they exist, nothing on which the eye can rest with pleasure. The lower floor of this inn swarms with locusts in addition to thousands of black flies. The latter cover the ground and rise buzzing from it as you walk.

for the Indians are raiding in all directions, maddened by the reckless and useless slaughter of the buffalo, which is their chief subsistence.

It was then 11:30 P.M., and I had not had a meal since 6 A.M.; but when I asked hopefully for a hot supper, with tea, I was told that no supper could be got at that hour; but in half an hour the same man returned with a small cup of cold, weak tea, and a small slice of bread, which looked as if it had been much handled.

At Lachalang, at a height of over 15,000 feet, I noted a solar temperature of 152 degrees, only 35 degrees below the boiling point of water in the same region, which is about 187 degrees. To make up for this, the mercury falls below the freezing point every night of the year, even in August the difference of temperature in twelve hours often exceeding 120 degrees! The Rupchu nomads, however,

cups of a strong stimulant made of Burroughes and Wellcome's vigorous 'valoid' tincture of ginger and hot water, revived the men all round.

Within certain limits the ground grows greener as one ascends, and we passed upwards among primulas, asters, a large blue myosotis, gentians, potentillas, and great sheets of edelweiss.

The Tibetans, in practice, are very simple in their applications of medical remedies. Rubbing with butter is their great panacea. They have a dread of small-pox, and instead of burning its victims they throw them into their rapid torrents. If an isolated case occur, the sufferer is carried to a mountain-top, where he is left to recover or die. If a small-pox epidemic is in the province, the people of the villages in which it has not yet appeared place thorns on their bridges and boundaries, to scare away the evil spirits which are supposed to carry the disease.

Family life presents some curious features. In the disposal in marriage of a girl, her eldest brother has more 'say' than the parents. The eldest son brings home the bride to his father's house, but at a given age the old people are 'shelved,' i.e. they retire to a small house, which may be termed a 'jointure house,' and the eldest son assumes the patrimony and the rule of affairs.

permitting marriage only to the eldest son, the heir of the land, while the bride accepts all his brothers as inferior or subordinate husbands, thus attaching the whole family to the soil and family roof-tree, the children being regarded legally as the property of the eldest son, who is addressed by them as 'Big Father,' his brothers receiving the title of 'Little Father.

The Tibetan wife, far from spending these gifts on personal adornment, looks ahead, contemplating possible contingencies, and immediately hires a field, the produce of which is her own, and which accumulates year after year in a separate granary, so that she may not be portionless in case she leaves her husband!

he "fyked" unreasonably about me, the mare, and the crossing generally,

Young Lyman talked in a "hifalutin" style, but with some truth in it, of the influence of a woman's presence, how "low, mean, vulgar talk" had died out on my return, how they had "all pulled themselves up," and how Mr. Kavan and Mr. Buchan had said they would like always to be as quiet and gentlemanly as when a lady was with them.

In all this wild West the influence of woman is second only in its benefits to the influence of religion, and where the last unhappily does not exist the first continually exerts its restraining

It is the election day for the Territory, and men were galloping over the prairie to register their votes. The three in the wagon talked politics the whole time. They spoke openly and shamelessly of the prices given for votes; and apparently there was not a politician on either side who was not accused of degrading corruption.

In traveling there is nothing like dissecting people's statements, which are usually colored by their estimate of the powers or likings of the person spoken to, making all reasonable inquiries, and then pertinaciously but quietly carrying out one's own plans.

Some people live to travel while others travel to live.

Although our feelings are not particularly fraternal, we give the people inhabiting this continent the national cognomen of "Brother Jonathan," while we name individuals "Yankees." We know that they are famous for smoking, spitting, "gouging," and bowie-knives—for monster hotels, steamboat explosions, railway collisions, and repudiated debts.

renowned for keeping three millions of Africans in slavery—for wooden nutmegs, paper money, and "fillibuster" expeditions—for carrying out nationally and individually the maxim   "That they may take who have the power,   And they may keep who can.

broken only by the note of the distant bull-frog; meteors fell in streams of fire, the crescent

The silence of the forest was so solemn, that, remembering the last of the Mohicans, we should not have been the least surprised if an Indian war- whoop had burst upon our startled ears.

The captain was committed for manslaughter, but escaped the punishment due to his offence, though popular indignation was strongly excited against him.

They had welcomed the "pale faces" to the "land of the setting sun," and withered up before them, smitten by their crimes. Almost destitute of tradition, their history involved in obscurity, their broad lands filled with their unknown and nameless graves, these mighty races have passed away; they could not pass into slavery, therefore they must die.

There were also numerous blacks in the streets, and, if I might judge from the brilliant colours and good quality of their clothing, they must gain a pretty good living by their industry. A large number of these blacks and their parents were carried away from the States by one of our admirals in the war of 1812, and landed at Halifax. The capital of Nova Scotia looks like a town of cards, nearly all the buildings being of wood.

The telegraph costs about 20_l._ per mile,

Books alone are cheap and abundant, being the American editions of pirated English works.

where windows ought to have been were screened by heavy curtains of tarnished moose-deer hide.

Every one has heard of corduroy roads, but how few have experienced their miseries! They are generally used for traversing swampy ground, and are formed of small pine-trees deprived of their branches, which are laid across the track alongside each other. The wear and tear of travelling soon separates these, leaving gaps between; and when, added to this, one trunk rots away, and another sinks down into the swamp, and another tilts up, you may imagine

The tea was not tempting to an English palate; it was stewed, and sweetened with molasses.

Most assuredly that spirit of envious rivalry and depreciating criticism in which many English travellers have written, is greatly to be deprecated, no less than the tone of servile adulation which some writers have adopted; but our American neighbours must recollect that they provoked both the virulent spirit and the hostile caricature by the way in which some of their most popular writers of travels have led an ungenerous onslaught against our institutions and people, and the bitter tone in which their newspaper press, headed by the Tribune, indulges towards

No more hunters' tales told while the pine knots crack and blaze; no more thrilling narratives of adventures with Indians and bears; and never again shall I hear that strange talk of Nature and her doings which is the speech of those who live with her and her alone. Already the dismalness of a level land comes over me.