There is one distinctive charm about fishing - its fascinations will stand any climate. You may sit crouching on ice over a hole inside the arctic circle, or on a Windsor chair by the side of the River Lea in the so-called temperate zone, or you may squat in a canoe on an equatorial river, with the surrounding atmosphere forty-five percent mosquito, and if you are fishing you will enjoy yourself ...
source: - Mary Kingsley (2013). “West African Studies”, p.75, Routledge
Topics: Ice, Fishing, Circles, Windsor, Enjoy Yourself
the African leopard is an audacious animal, although it is ungrateful of me to say a word against him, after the way he has let me off personally ... taken as a whole, he is the most lovely animal I have ever seen; only seeing him, in the one way you can gain a full idea of his beauty, namely in his native forest, is not an unmixed joy to a person, like myself, of a nervous disposition.
source: - Mary Kingsley (2010). “Travels in West Africa, Congo Français, Corisco and Cameroons”, p.543, Cambridge University Press
Topics: Taken, Animal, Ideas
One immense old lady has a family of lively young crocodiles running over her, evidently playing like a lot of kittens. The heavy musky smell they give off is most repulsive, but we do not rise up and make a row about this, because we feel hopelessly in the wrong in intruding into these family scenes uninvited ...
source: - Mary Kingsley (2010). “Travels in West Africa, Congo Français, Corisco and Cameroons”, p.244, Cambridge University Press
Topics: Running, Smell, Giving, Uninvited