The other day I started reading Richard Francis Burton, Personal Narrative of a Pilgrimage to El-Medinah and Meccah. 2 vols. (New York: G. P. Putnam & Co., 1856), and the following lovely sample of description comes from 1:115:
Nothing more comfortless than our days and nights in the "George" Inn. The ragged walls of our rooms were clammy with dirt, the smoky rafters foul with cobwebs, and the floor, bestrewed with kit, in terrible confusion, was black with hosts of ants and flies. Pigeons nestled on the shelf, cooing amatory ditties the live-long day, and cats, like tigers, crawled through a hole in the door, making night hideous with their cat-a-waulings. Now a curious goat, then an inquisitive jackass, would walk stealthily into the room, remark that it was tenanted, and retreat with dignified demeanor, and the mosquitoes sang Io Paeans over our prostrate forms throughout the twenty-four hours. I spare the reader the enumeration of the other Egyptian plagues that infested the place.I love the vividness!
