341 quotes by explorers for you to enjoy

The cocoa-nut palm grows best near salt water, no matter how loose and sandy the soil is, and in these congenial circumstances needs neither manure nor care of any kind. It bends lovingly toward the sea and drops its ripe fruit into it. Isabella Bird

Best Needs Fruit Water Matter Care Soil Salt Bends Circumstances Kind Neither Ripe Drops Toward Loose How Nor Any Lovingly Sandy Congenial Sea Manure Near Grows Palm

My first experiences of Colorado travel have been rather severe. At Greeley, I got a small upstairs room at first, but gave it up to a married couple with a child, and then had one downstairs no bigger than a cabin, with only a canvas partition. It was very hot, and every place was thick with black flies. Isabella Bird

Travel Black First Every Gave Severe Married Married Couple Rather Only Small Colorado Cabin Had Hot Couple Partition Got Been Up Very Than Child Experiences Bigger Upstairs Place Canvas Room Then Flies Thick Downstairs

I lived among the Japanese, and saw their mode of living, in regions unaffected by European contact. Isabella Bird

Living Saw Unaffected Contact Mode Regions Japanese European Lived Among

If Japanese tea 'stands,' it acquires a coarse bitterness and an unwholesome astringency. Milk and sugar are not used. Isabella Bird

Bitterness Tea Sugar Unwholesome Japanese Used Coarse Stands Milk

The Tigris in parts is wonderfully tortuous, and at one great bend, 'The Devil's Elbow,' a man on foot can walk the distance in less than an hour which takes the steamer four hours to accomplish. Isabella Bird

Great Man Walk Devil Bend Distance Tortuous Foot Takes Hour Hours Parts Accomplish Than Wonderfully Which Elbow Less Four

Poverty brings one blessing in Turkey - the poor man is of necessity a monogamist. Isabella Bird

Man Blessing Poverty Poor Man Turkey Poor Brings Necessity

On the whole, I find that it is best to adopt as far as possible the travelling equipments of the country in which one travels. The muleteers and servants understand them better, and if anything goes wrong or wears out, it can be repaired or replaced. Isabella Bird

The 'Desert' sweeps up to the walls of Baghdad, but it is a misnomer to call the vast level of rich, stoneless, alluvial soil a desert. It is a dead flat of uninhabited earth; orange colocynth balls, a little wormwood, and some alkaline plants which camels eat, being its chief products. After the inundations, reedy grass grows in the hollows. Isabella Bird

Walls Plants Soil Rich Grass Earth Eat Some Vast Baghdad Dead Call Camels Balls Up Chief Orange Being After Flat Which Little Products Desert Grows Level

The Tibetans are dirty. They wash once a year and, except for festivals, seldom change their clothes till they begin to drop off. They are healthy and hardy; even the women can carry weights of sixty pounds over the passes. They attain extreme old age; their voices are harsh and loud, and their laughter is noisy and hearty. Isabella Bird

Change Age Women Old Laughter Drop Healthy Year Clothes Old Age Extreme Once Once A Year Harsh Carry Voices Dirty Except Seldom Attain Pounds Weights Over Noisy Till Passes Off Loud Begin Festivals Hearty Sixty Wash Even Hardy

The rush of a herd of bellowing yaks at a wild gallop, waving their huge tails, is a grand sight. Isabella Bird

Herd Wild Waving Sight Rush Tails Huge Grand Gallop

My first yak was fairly quiet and looked a noble steed with my Mexican saddle and gay blanket among rather than upon his thick black locks. His back seemed as broad as that of an elephant, and with his slow, sure, resolute step, he was like a mountain in motion. Isabella Bird

Gay Black Slow First Back Broad Locks Seemed Rather Blanket He Step Noble Saddle Like Looked Fairly Sure Motion His Mexican Mountain Than Quiet Thick Elephant Among Resolute

The breadfruit is a superb tree, about 60 feet high, with deep green, shining leaves, a foot broad, sharply and symmetrically cut, worthy, from their exceeding beauty of form, to take the place of the acanthus in architectural ornament, and throwing their pale green fruit into delicate contrast. Isabella Bird

Fruit Beauty Tree Broad High Worthy Superb About Architectural Exceeding Delicate Take Throwing Foot Feet Sharply Leaves Shining Contrast Green Form Place Cut Deep Pale Ornament

Mauna Kea from Hilo has a shapely aspect, for its top is broken into peaks, said to be the craters of extinct volcanoes, but my eyes seek the dome-like curve of Mauna Loa with far deeper interest, for it is as yet an unfinished mountain. Isabella Bird

Broken Eyes Unfinished Top Seek Said Mountain Curve Interest Far Aspect Deeper Peaks Extinct

I suppose that few people ever forget the first sight of a palm-tree of any species. I vividly remember seeing one for the first time at Malaga, but the coco-palm groves of the Pacific have a strangeness and witchery of their own. Isabella Bird

Time People Remember First Few Own Sight Seeing Vividly Suppose First Time Forget Few People Any Pacific Strangeness Species Ever

I went to the States with that amount of prejudice which seems the birthright of every English person, but I found that, under the knowledge of the Americans which can be attained by a traveller mixing in society in every grade, these prejudices gradually melted away. Isabella Bird

An Englishman bears with patience any ridicule which foreigners cast upon him. John Bull never laughs so loudly as when he laughs at himself; but the Americans are nationally sensitive and cannot endure that good-humoured raillery which jests at their weaknesses and foibles. Isabella Bird

Grapes are grown in such profusion in the Southern and Western States that I have seen damaged bunches thrown to the pigs. Americans find it difficult to understand how highly this fruit is prized in England. Isabella Bird

Fruit Seen Difficult States Find Thrown Highly Pigs Understand How Western Southern Prized American Grapes England Grown Damaged

Slavery, though under modifications which rendered it little more than the apprenticeship of our day, was permitted under the Mosaic dispensation; but it is contrary to the whole tenor of Christianity; and a system which lowers man as an intellectual and responsible being is no less morally than politically wrong. Isabella Bird

Day Man Christianity Apprenticeship Our Though System Responsible Morally More Tenor Wrong Mosaic Rendered Permitted Intellectual Contrary Than Politically Being Which Little Less Whole Slavery

Water is a beverage which I never enjoyed in purity and perfection before I visited America. It is provided in abundance in the cars, the hotels, the waiting-rooms, the steamers, and even the stores, in crystal jugs or stone filters, and it is always iced. This may be either the result or the cause of the temperance of the people. Isabella Bird

People Water Result Cause Car Before Filters Visited Temperance Purity Never Perfection Abundance Beverage Hotels Crystal Always Provided America Stone May Stores Either Which Even Enjoyed

The Malays, like the Japanese, have a most rigid epistolary etiquette and set forms for letter writing. Letters must consist of six parts and are so highly elaborate that the scribes who indite them are almost looked upon as litterateurs. Isabella Bird

In Japan, the people preserve their temples for their exquisite beauty, and there are a great many sincere Buddhists; but China is irreligious: a nation of atheists or agnostics, or slaves of impious superstitions. In an extended tramp among temples, I have not seen a single male worshiper or a thing to please the eye. Isabella Bird

Great People Seen Beauty Single Nation Please Eye Atheists Temples Superstitions Buddhists Sincere Male Tramp China Japan Agnostic Many Among Exquisite Extended Thing Slaves Preserve

An elephant always puts his foot into the hole which another elephant's foot has made so that a frequented track is nothing but a series of pits filled with mud and water. Isabella Bird

Water Made Nothing Foot Puts Track Another Always His Pits Hole Which Mud Series Filled Elephant

The Malays have many queer notions about tigers and usually only speak of them in whispers, because they think that certain souls of human beings who have departed this life have taken up their abode in these beasts, and in some places, for this reason, they will not kill a tiger unless he commits some specially bad aggression. Isabella Bird

Life Speak Will Think Unless Bad Abode Some About Only Beasts He Taken Tiger Because Tigers Souls Queer Up Departed Human Human Beings Places Them Certain Aggression Notions Reason Who Many Beings

One must never look for happiness: one meets it by the way. Isabelle Eberhardt

Happiness Meets Way Must Never Look

Quotes by Explorers