Explore "The Vultures" by Henry Seton Merriman on Textopian. Read with annotations and highlights.
Like the majority of Englishmen, Cartoner had that fever of the horizon which makes a man desire to get out of a place as soon as he is in it. The average Englishman is not content to see a city; he must walk out of it, through its suburbs and beyond them, just to see how the city lies.
Before he had been long in Warsaw, Cartoner hired a horse and took leisurely rides out of the town in all directions. He found suburbs more or less depressing, and dusty roads innocent of all art, half-paved, growing wider with the lapse of years, as in self-defence the foot-passengers encroached on the fields on either side in search of a cleaner thoroughfare. To the north he found that the great fort which a Russian emperor built for Warsaw's good, and which in case of emergency could batter the city down in a few hours, but could not defend it from any foe whatever. Across the river he rode through Praga, of grimmest memory, into closely cultivated plains. But mostly he rode by the riverbanks, where there are more trees and where the country is less uniform. He rode more often than elsewhere southward by the Vistula, and knew the various roads and paths that led to Wilanow.