Book Description

This historic book may have numerous typos and missing text. Purchasers can usually download a free scanned copy of the original book (without typos) from the publisher. Not indexed. Not illustrated. 1839 edition. Excerpt: ... the Quay is about an English mile, from which the city extends in a semicircle; most of the streets are wide, all of them paved, and some of them furnished with footpaths. The houses are of white stone, and, generally speaking, much handsomer than those we are accustomed to see'at home. Most of the squares are very well built, but, from want of some object in the centre, 234 SAND-STORM. look bare and deserted, besides giving ample room for the accumulation of those heaps of sand with which Pest is infested. This sand is one of the miseries of Pest; it is so fine that it enters into everything, destroys furniture, and blinds and chokes the inhabitants worse than a London fog. 'A sandstorm is something dreadful here. The country round Pest is a sandy plain, --there are few trees or gardens in the outskirts of the place, nothing to break the force of the wind; so that, when it once gathers into a storm, it marches forward, drawn on by the current of the Danube, and traverses the wide streets of Pest almost without opposition. One sultry day, as I was writing at the hotel, I found the sky suddenly clouded; and, on looking out to see the cause, I felt the air hot and dry; and observed at the end of the long street, which runs parallel with the Danube, a vast cloud of sand advancing slowly forward, attended with a hissing noise as it passed on. A slamming of windows on every side announced that all my neighbours were providing against the enemy; and I had just time to shut mine before it swept by. For five minutes a dense mass of moving sand filled the whole street. In spite of all precautions, however, I found my books and papers covered with a very fine dust, which had entered by the crevices of the window-frames. It has been suggested that..