Sunshine and storm in the East, or Cruises to Cyprus and Constantinople
Annie Allnutt Brassey
Paperback
(RareBooksClub.com, May 14, 2012)
This historic book may have numerous typos and missing text. Purchasers can download a free scanned copy of the original book (without typos) from the publisher. Not indexed. Not illustrated. 1880 Excerpt: ...us so many thousand leagues in safety and comfort, lay quietly beneath the waters, on the surface of which she had thus far ridden so securely. Sunday, October 13/A.--At 2.30 a.m. we commenced steaming, and at 6 a.m. we were off Almeria, a large town situated in a plain of great luxuriance, on the shores of a noble bay of the same name. The big white houses with snowy fronts, facing the sea, looked quite like palaces, while the old brown Moorish castle and walls, surrounded as they are by orange groves and green foliage of all sorts, enhanced the picturesque appearance of the place. At 8 a.m. there was a nice breeze, and at about 10 a.m. the yacht was off Cape Agate (Cape de Gat), so called from the mountain being composed almost entirely of spars and quartz, in which many amethysts are met with. At a distance of about five miles from the cape we were hailed by a small sailing boat, manned by six men, who, to our surprise, offered us grapes, melons, pomegranates, potatoes, and all sorts of fruit and vegetables, which wc were as glad to buy as they were to sell. Like the Fucgians in the Straits of Magellan,. galleta' (biscuit) and 'tabaca' was their cry, and I believe some of our crew made far better bargains with them in exchange for those commodities than we did in exchange for coin, though of the Spanish realm. I thought it was highly enterprising of them to set up this sort of village shop on the sea. We had morning service at 11.30 a.m. and evening service at 3.30 p.m. In the afternoon the sea was quite rough, with a strong contrary wind, and at sunset we fancied we could still discern the Rock of Gibraltar. The light on Cape Falcon, on the coast of Africa, became visible later on. We tacked again towards Cartagena, and then back again, but seemed to ma...