J. A. Zahm

“ Can we wonder that such an ardent lover of Nature and such a strenuous votary of science was able to forget herself in her work and was able, notwithstanding her toils and her sufferings, to produce six quarto volumes of reports, in as many years, on the unexplored regions which she had so carefully surveyed and charted? Can we be surprised that her labors received due recognition from learned societies in both the New and the Old World, and that she was acclaimed as an explorer who had rendered distinct service to the cause of natural science, as well as to geography? ”

“ Surprising as it may seem, she was, as scholars now concede, none other than Semiramis, the famous legendary queen of Assyria.
What a marvelous discovery! What a vindication of long suppressed truth! What an unexpected substitution of reality for fiction, of fact for fancy, of authentic history for myth and legend!
To no other woman of antiquity have there been attributed so many brilliant achievements as to Semiramis. Nor has any one of her sex during the last two thousand years and more, occupied a more conspicuous position in myth and legend, song and story. ”

“ Never before nor since did such a wave of feminine genius pass over the fragrant valleys and vine-clad plains of Greece. Never in any other place or time shone so brilliant a galaxy of women of talent and imagination; never was there a more perfect flowering of female intelligence of the highest order. According to tradition, there appeared in the favored land of Hellas, when the entire population of the country was not equal to that of a fair-sized modern city, within the brief space of a century, no fewer than seventy-six women poets. ”

“ As along the Macareo, so here along the Orinoco, one never tires of gazing at the magnificent forest trees and the dense shrubbery with which the banks are fringed. At one time it is the wide-branched ceiba, covered with bright-blooming epiphytes; at another a clump of graceful moriche palms, whose tremulous plumes are given an added beauty by the presence of a bevy of multicolored parrots and macaws. The foliage of tree and shrub is here ever fresh and luxuriant and retains always that delicate hue so characteristic of the leafage of our northern woodlands in the early days of spring. ”

“ Everywhere are evidences of past refinement, splendor and greatness. And over all the prostrate columns and broken entablatures, the domed mosques and black-green cypresses, the fertile valleys and the great desert, the dark-visaged men and the silent, veiled women lingers the spell, undefinable but wondrously fascinating, of Asia; the cradle of the human race, the land of luxurious magnificence, the abode of mighty empires that rose and crumbled long before the western world had emerged from darkness ”

“ America has produced no Raphael or Michaelangelo; no Mozart or Wagner or Tschaikovsky. Nor has it given us a Descartes, a Leibnitz, a Newton or a Darwin. Would any one, from this complete absence in America of representatives of the highest order in literature, art and science, ever dream of concluding that we shall never have such favorite sons of genius and such giants of intellect? ”

“ Here, before us, there is reason to believe, was the land of Cariari, and, just a stone’s throw from our steamer was the charming island of Quiribri, which, on account of its beauty and the lovely trees with which it was adorned—palms and bananas and platanos—the Admiral called El Huerto—the orchard. To-day it is known as the island of Uvita, and is used for quarantine. As we gazed on this exquisite spot, provided with cozy cottages nestling among clumps of stately palms, and decked with beauteous flowers of every hue, we almost regretted that we could not spend a few days there. ”

“ How often does not the explorer in Anatolia unexpectedly come upon a dead city on a mountain slope or in a hidden hollow, which was abandoned a thousand years ago, whose streets are choked with brushwood, whose palaces and theaters are covered with a tangle of vegetation, whose marble tombs are hidden by brambles, where the only human being ever seen is a wandering shepherd who is absolutely indifferent to these marvelous vestiges of a marvelous past? ”

“ A few years after she had become a member of the university faculty Laura was a European celebrity, and no one eminent by learning or birth passed through Bologna without availing himself of the opportunity of making the acquaintance of so extraordinary a woman. Men of science and letters vied with princes and emperors in doing honor to one who was looked upon by many as being, like Arete of old, endowed with a soul and a genius far above that of ordinary mortals, and as being the possessor of a talent that indicated something superhuman. ”

“ The old capital of Cilicia is, of truth, a city of a wonderful historic past. But among all her proud memories those which have made her best known throughout the ages and which will endure the longest are not those of her abounding wealth and luxury, her superb monuments and palaces and temples, long in ruins; not those that clustered around her poets and philosophers and made her a favored sanctuary of the Muses; not those of her schools and gymnasia and her one-time eminence as the rival of Athens and Alexandria as the home of learning and culture ”

“ While wandering through the famed and picturesque land of the Hellenes, rejoicing in the countless beauties of the islands of the Ionian and Ægean seas or scaling the heights of Helicon and Parnassus, all so redolent of the storied past, I saw on every side tangible evidence of that marvelous race of men and women whose matchless achievements have been the delight and inspiration of the world for nearly three thousand years. ”

“ Beautiful, dark-eyed señoritas, adorned with their graceful mantillas, were promenading with their fathers and mothers, and gay young cavaliers were following at a discreet distance, á la Española. The tropical trees and flowers, which gave to the plaza the aspect of a botanical garden, were beautifully illuminated, and, without any effort of the imagination, one could easily imagine one’s self in fairyland. Hard by, a young lady from Trinidad, on whose finger was a sparkling solitaire, was recounting, in a more audible tone than she imagined, the pleasures of her voyage up the Orinoco. ”

“ Coffee is our gold and in the place of its libations we are in the enjoyment of the best and noblest society. Coffee is as innocent a drink as the purest milk from which it is distinguished only by its color. Tarry with thy coffee in the place of its preparation and the good God will hover over thee and participate in His feast. There the graces of the salon, the luxury of life, the society of friends, all furnish a picture of the abode of happiness. ”

“ I can fully sympathize with Waterton’s longing for the wild and his love of tropical life. Every lover of nature, who has spent some time in the heart of the equatorial forests, is affected in the same way. The wanderlust and abenteuergeist—the love of travel and adventure—grows on one, it seems, in the wilds of South America more than elsewhere. Is it because the conquistadores and other early explorers have impregnated the atmosphere with their spirit, or because the environment of itself has the power of inoculating the visitor from the north with the microbe of a life-long wanderleben? ”

“ Never in the history of the world were there in any one city so many eminent men—poets, orators, statesmen, painters, sculptors, architects, philosophers—as in Athens, and yet not a single native-born Athenian woman ever attained the least distinction in any department of art or science or literature. We cannot conceive for a moment that Greece's fertility in great men and barrenness in great women was due to the fact that the mothers of such illustrious men were ordinary housewives [Pg 17] and entirely devoid of the talent and genius which gave immortality to their distinguished sons. ”