April 2– From Voyage of The Beagle (1839) by Charles Darwin
Summary: Darwin checks out a native ceremony and some nightmare crabs while studying reefs and atolls.
Commentary: For those of you stopping by for the first time, let me just start by recommending that you go read some Darwin. I'll admit up front that he's very racist at some points, but I think the quality of his writing outweighs that. It helps that he's dead. He makes travel writing sound like a fantasy novel, and it's super cool. I believe this section substantially overlaps the start of the last one I read. I'm not sure why they're like that, but interesting to start seeing some of the pieces fit together.
The dance did not commence till the moon had risen, and it was well worth remaining to behold her bright orb so quietly shining through the long arms of the cocoa-nut trees as they waved in the evening breeze
Like this part here. It's not overly purple (something I feel a lot of travelogues fall into) but it does make the ceremony sound appropriately exotic and beautiful.
Or take this:
A man standing ready in the bow at this moment dashes through the water upon the turtle’s back; then clinging with both hands by the shell of its neck, he is carried away till the animal becomes exhausted and is secured. It was quite an interesting chase to see the two boats thus doubling about, and the men dashing head foremost into the water trying to seize their prey.
If you ever need a description of how they hunt the STORMTURTLE for your fantasy novel, just crib some Darwin. Maybe leave off the part after this about cooking their shells off them alive and releasing them to die... Or maybe not, some books are dark like that.
Or maybe you could use one random out of place rock (it's really a dragon egg or something):
The occurrence of this one stone, where every other particle of matter is calcareous, certainly is very puzzling.
The rest is a repeat of last time. If you weren't following the blog then, go read about nightmare crabs!
No comments:
Post a Comment