Now let us see what Lieutenants Burton and Speke accomplished in
Eastern Africa.
The sun had climbed the
eastern sky and was making all details clear.
The other or
eastern end of the isle was whelmed in the blackest shade.
The whole appearance of this warrior and his retinue was wild and outlandish; the dress of his squires was gorgeous, and his
Eastern attendants wore silver collars round their throats, and bracelets of the same metal upon their swarthy arms and legs, of which the former were naked from the elbow, and the latter from mid-leg to ankle.
Changing the horses stage by stage, I went on till the night ended--went on till the sun rose in the
eastern heaven.
It was a romantic narrative of some
Eastern traveller of the thirties, pompous maybe, but fragrant with the emotion with which the East came to the generation that followed Byron and Chateaubriand.
From out of the meagerness of our censored histories we learned that for fifteen years after the cessation of diplomatic relations between the United States of North America and the belligerent nations of the Old World, news of more or less doubtful authenticity filtered, from time to time, into the Western Hemisphere from the
Eastern.
Soon it was split in two, and there arose a western and an
eastern Empire.
This it was that had turned his genius so wholly to
eastern art and imagery; to those bewildering carpets or blinding embroideries in which all the colours seem fallen into a fortunate chaos, having nothing to typify or to teach.
The stars were dim, and thick the night, The steersman's face by his lamp gleamed white; From the sails the dew did drip-- Till clombe above the
eastern bar The horned Moon, with one bright star Within the nether tip.
At its base was a line of well-tended shrubs and at some distance towards its
eastern extremity it was vine covered to the top.
Through Del Norte and Humboldt counties they went, and through Mendocino into Sonoma --counties larger than
Eastern states--threading the giant woods, whipping innumerable trout-streams, and crossing countless rich valleys.