The Circe of the deserts

ON February 10, 1810, the frigate _Jason_, commander James King,--left Portsmouth, bound for Gibraltar. In the stern of the vessel, a group of four persons watched the coast, wh...

ON a beautiful spring morning a frigate cast anchor in the Bay of Gibraltar. Lady Hester disembarked with a young lady companion, Miss Williams, who had been a long time in the...

ON October 16, 1810, Lady Hester Stanhope and her companions left Athens on board of a Greek polacca. But, having been enlightened in regard to the skill of the mariners who, in...

She did not intend to seek oblivion, for the necessity of getting herself talked about, and the thirst for a celebrity which she strove vainly to retain, formed part of her natu...

ST. JEAN D'ACRE stretches out into the sea like a greyhound which stretches himself lazily in the sun. The tiny harbour seemed to have been scooped out to satisfy the caprice of...

ON August 27, 1812, Lady Hester had left Deir-el-Kammar, edified on the subject of Eastern hospitality. The Emir Bechir had supplied all the requirements of her table with great...

WHEN the doctor arrived at Damascus, he found everything topsy-turvy. The commotion was extreme. The pacha's troops, already fully equipped, had been sent away, the guides dismi...

LADY HESTER was cooped up in Hama. Amongst the old men, the most grey-headed did not recollect so severe a winter as that of 1813. Nearly all the fruit-trees of the beautiful ga...

LADY HESTER, whose health was detestable, hoped that a new sky and a new climate would bring her that cure which always persisted in fleeing before her. On May 10, 1813, she lef...

TIRED in body and irritated in mind, Lady Hester revived at Mar-Elias. At that moment, Pierre Ruffin, French chargé d'affaires at Constantinople, an intimate friend of the amiab...