Thun

“ The young men at the big hotel in Thun were clad mostly in knickerbockers, and many of them had alpenstocks of their own. It soon became their delight to sit on the terrace in front of the hotel during the pleasant summer evenings and relate to Bessie their hairbreath escapes, the continuous murmur of the River Aare forming a soothing chorus to their dramatic narrations. At least a dozen young men hovered round the girl, willing and eager to confide in her ”

“ However, when we came down to breakfast at 8 A.M., it looked so much like rain that I hired a two-horse top-buggy for the first third of the journey. For two or three hours we jogged along the level road which skirts the beautiful lake of Thun, with a dim and dreamlike picture of watery expanses and spectral Alpine forms always before us, veiled in a mellowing mist. Then a steady downpour set in, and hid everything but the nearest objects. We kept the rain out of our faces with umbrellas, and away from our bodies with the leather apron of the buggy ”

“ Thun (6) , a quaint old town of Switzerland, on the Aar, 17 m. SE. of Bern, and barely 1 m. distant from Lake of Thun (12 m. by 2 m.) ; has a 12th-century castle, &c.
Thunderer, name given to the Times, from certain powerful articles in it ascribed to the editor, Captain Edward Stirling.
Thurgau (105) , a canton of Switzerland, on the NE. frontier, where Lake Constance for a considerable distance forms its boundary; inhabitants are mainly Protestant; country is hilly but not mountainous, fertile, and traversed by the river Thur, a tributary of the Rhine ”

“ A pleasant sail back to Interlaken, an omnibus ride over to a steamboat landing, and we were once more embarked on another Swiss lake,—Lake Thun,—a beautiful sheet of water ten miles long, a portion of its banks covered with vineyards, and the view of Alps on Alps, in every direction in the distance, most magnificent ”

“ Thoune) , a picturesque little town in the Swiss canton of Bern, built on the banks of the Aar, just as it issues from the Lake of Thun, and by rail 19 m. S.E. of Bern, or 171 m. N.W. of Interlaken. It is the capital of the Bernese Oberland, the snowy peaks of which are well seen from it. It has 6030 inhabitants, mostly German-speaking and Protestants. The 18th-century parish church and the 15th-century castle rise in a striking fashion above the town, in the chief street of which are arcades (locally called Lauben) as in Bern. ”

“ I should prefer it even to Thun, for its green plain nestles more closely under the hills. The pensions are built on the same line, but apart; 60 with a mountain back and mountain view, their gardens surrounding them, and a noble avenue of old walnut-trees extending the whole length they occupy. The road to Lauterbrunnen winds through shady lanes and crosses meadows of Swiss verdure, and then lies beneath wooded hills, on the summit of one of which rises Unspunnen, the castle of Byron’s Manfred ”

“ Lord High Dictator Thuno Flâtum, sovereign of the great empire of Wu and illustrious ruler of the Underworld and the Overworld, I prostrate myself before you! Long may your distinguished might endure! Long may your power cause the nations to shake! I come to you today on a momentous mission, and I trust you will let no thought of my personal unworthiness deter you from that just decision for which you are so rightly renowned. Know, O Thuno Flâtum, that this day a stranger of queer and unprepossessing appearance has been found in our midst. ”

“ Just then the Stockholm steamer, Daniel Thunberg, hove in sight, with her light blue pennant of smoke, so unlike the black volumes that roll from the chimneys of coal-burning Englishmen.
“They have got something on board for us,” said Moodie; “that calico concern on her foremast is their best Swedish imitation of our English jack, and they always hoist it whenever they have got a letter or parcel for me. There goes a gun; those rascals are always glad of any opportunity for making a bang. Hallo, there! Nils!” ”

“ I shd be glad to know also whether there were any cases in wh it is unsafe, e.g. in a nervous person.
On October 1 Mr. Hope left Munich to pay a visit at Tetschen, the seat of his friends the Thun family (described vol. i. p. 42) , taking Ratisbon and other places in his way. At Tetschen, where he stayed from October 5 to 12, he found a sad blank in the recent death of the Countess Thun. From an interesting letter to Lady Hope (dated Vienna, October 26, 1844) which furnishes these dates, I transcribe also the following particulars:—
Countess Anna is still in very uncertain health.... ”

“ Thunberg speaks of a mountain, or rather a large single rock in the Cape Colony called Slangenkop, which signifies Serpent's Head. On one side of it is a large and deep crevice, which makes this rock remarkable, for every autumn almost all the serpents of the neighbourhood creep into it and assemble together, in order to remain there secure and unmolested during their torpid state. ”

“ In order to support the dignity of the Dutch East India Company, the bed equipage which they carried with them, consisting of coverlids, pillows, and mattresses, was covered with the richest open-work velvets and silks. Their retinue, on horseback and on foot, was numerous and picturesque. They were received everywhere with the honor and respect paid to the princes of the land; and, besides, says Thunberg, were so well guarded “that no harm could befall us, and, at the same time, so well attended that we had no more care upon our minds than a sucking child ”

“ Being now his own master, he prepared to visit the principal countries of Europe; and, as Thunberg had been appointed demonstrator of botany, the government granted him permission. Want of money, however, presented an obstacle; to overcome which he found it necessary to borrow a sum of his friend Baron Alstrœmer, to whom he resigned his juvenile herbarium in pledge. At London, where he arrived in May 1781, he was received with enthusiasm, and treated with every possible attention by his father's friends and correspondents, especially Sir Joseph Banks, in whose house he principally resided. ”

“ That the Teutonic thunder god Donar, Thunar, Thor was identified with the Italian thunder god Jupiter appears from our word Thursday, Thunar’s day, which is merely a rendering of the Latin dies Jovis. [1197] Thus among the ancient Teutons, as among the Greeks and Italians, the god of the oak was also the god of the thunder. Moreover, he was regarded as the great fertilising power, who sent rain and caused the earth to bear fruit; for Adam of Bremen tells us that “Thor presides in the air; he it is who rules thunder and lightning, wind and rains, fine weather and crops.” ”

“ Making Cape Town his headquarters, he undertook at least three separate journeys into the interior, the first extending from 10 Dec. 1772 to 18 Jan. 1773 ; the second, in company with Thunberg, the Swedish naturalist, lasted from 11 Sept. ”

“ What the original may be I know not, but the translator does not appear even to have admired the jump, much less to have suspected his own accuracy. In another place a Linnæan name saves him from a more portentous blunder. "Dragons, he says, flew about the environs of Batavia in great numbers during the heat of the day, like bats in a summer's evening in Europe, without injuring me, who sometimes caught them in their flight." The reader would suppose Thunberg to be outdoing St. ”

“ Like the surface of the sea was the mirror of Tuzun Thune; hard as the sea in the sun's slanting beams, in the darkness of the stars, when no eye can pierce her deeps; vast and mystic as the sea when the sun smites her in such way that the watcher's breath is caught at the glimpse of tremendous abysses. So was the mirror in which Kull gazed. ”

“ Kull was still mazed. "But being a wizard, having knowledge of all the ages and despising gold, glory and position, what could Kaanuub offer Tuzun Thune that would make of him a foul traitor?"
"Gold, power and position," grunted Brule. "The sooner you learn that men are men whether wizard, king or thrall, the better you will rule, Kull. ”

“ Abides for ever! Evermore the wind
Is thy august companion; and thy peers
Are cloud, and thunder, and the face sublime
Of blue mid-heaven! On thy awful brow
Is Deity; and in that voice of thine
There is the great imperial utterance
Of God for ever; and thy feet are set
Where evermore, through all the days and years,
There rolls the grand hymn of the deathless wave.
Araluen
Take this rose, and very gently place it on the tender, deep
Mosses where our little darling, Araluen, lies asleep. ”

“ For there are worlds beyond worlds, as Kull knows, and whether the wizard bewitched him by words or by mesmerism, vistas did open to the king's gaze beyond that strange door, and Kull is less sure of reality since he gazed into the mirrors of Tuzun Thune. ”

“ It overlooks the terrain in Alsace where for fifty years the Hun has been busy day and night with his sinister, occult operations. Its entrance, if there be any save by the way of avalanches—the way I entered—must be guarded by the Huns; its only exit into Hunland. That is Les Errues. That is the region which masks the Great Secret of the Hun."
He dropped the papers and, clasping his knees in his arms, sat staring out into the infernal blaze of sunset.
"The world," he said slowly, "pays little attention to that agglomeration of cantons called Switzerland. ”

“ DAYS IN YUNNAN-FU
THE situation of Yunnan's capital is extraordinarily picturesque. It stands in a wide plain, its northern wall running along a low rocky ridge from which there is a charming view over city and lake to the great mountains that skirt the plain on all sides. Lying at an elevation of nearly seven thousand feet, it is blessed with a white man's climate. Eighty-five degrees in the shade marks the highest summer temperature, and the winters are just pleasantly bracing. ”

“ Nowhere can be found so many and such great cities as we have, and not only the land but the waters are covered with our towns. I wish we could shut ourselves off, as once we were, and never see another barbarian. But alas, we cannot, for they cannot get along without us."
Thus Szu, puffed up with pride, instructed Tuen in the facts of Chinese history, and she drank in every word he said eagerly. ”

“ The town of Tunis itself seems to be spreading rapidly, large hotels spring up as suddenly as mushrooms after a night’s rain, and the streets are full of sight-seeing tourists. [141] At times a cargo of as many as five hundred of them may be dumped on shore, earnestly ‘doing’ Tunis in a few hours or a day and a half. The town Arab adapts himself to his environment and becomes one of that race of beings without nationality, familiar to all who have travelled in distant lands, a hybrid creature of most distasteful qualities. ”

“ The Hunsings were the same people as the Hunni mentioned by Bede [14] as one of the tribes by which England was settled. The country they occupied was a district in the province of Gröningen, in the North of Holland, where the river Hunse flows from the south past Gröningen towards the sea. A part of this country is, or was within the last century, known by its old name as the ‘District of Hunsing.’ [15] The ‘Hundings’ also are alluded to in the ‘Traveller’s Song,’ Hundingum being mentioned as if the people were a separate tribe. ”

“ A strip of blue sky, hot sunshine, the blue-green of a small dome, men in statuesque drapery outside the carved entrance of a mosque. A glimpse within of kneeling silent figures in white, in dove colour, in grey. And your flagging spirit fires again. Tunis is a beautiful Arab woman in European dress, and as such she frequently puts one’s teeth on edge. But push into the country and you will find the native life untouched, the peasant people leading the same lives as generations before them led, no hint of the uneasy modernism that spoils the capital. ”

“ There are artisans all about Switzerland whose trade it is to burn these things upon the alpenstock of the tourist. And observe, a man is respected in Switzerland according to his alpenstock. I found I could get no attention there, while I carried an unbranded one. However, branding is not expected, so I soon remedied that. The effect upon the next detachment of tourists was very marked. I felt repaid for my trouble.
Half of the summer horde in Switzerland is made up of English people; the other half is made up of many nationalities, the Germans leading and the Americans coming next. ”

“ The centre of the picture on which I looked from the deck of the Sicilia was the harbour of Goletta, with the broad sheet of the Lake of Tunis behind it, and in the dim distance the towers and roofs of Tunis itself. To the left were the high and precipitous ranges of the Lead Mountains, and far away I could dimly discern the sharp peaks of the blue Zaghouan Hills. How deeply one felt now regret at not having been able to explore the beautiful [238] country which lies everywhere around the city of Tunis. ”

“ THREE years ago West China seemed at the back of beyond. To make your way in you had either to traverse the length of Upper Burma and then cross the great rivers and ranges of western Yunnan, a weary month-long journey, or else spend tedious weeks ascending the Yangtse, the monotony of the trip tempered by occasional shipwreck. To-day, thanks to French enterprise, you can slip in between mountain and river and find yourself at Yunnan-fu, the provincial capital, after a railway journey of only three days and a half from Haiphong, the port of Tonking. ”