First one oar is backing water, and then the other; it is seldom that both are going ahead at once.

This kind of boating is calculated to drive an impatient man mad in a week.

The boatmen are the awkwardest, the stupidest, and the most unscientific on earth, without question.
Ashore, it was--well, it was an eternal circus.

People were thicker than bees, in those narrow streets, and the men were dressed in all the outrageous, outlandish, idolatrous, extravagant, thunder-and-lightning costumes that ever a tailor with the delirium tremens and seven devils could conceive of.

There was no freak in dress too crazy to be indulged in; no absurdity too absurd to be tolerated; no frenzy in ragged diabolism too fantastic to be attempted.