English actor, comedian, writer, and television presenter (born 1943)
Sir Michael Edward Palin, KCMG, CBE, FRGS, FRSGS (born 5 May 1943) is an English comedian, actor, television presenter and public speaker most famous as one of the members of the comedy group Monty Python, and as a presenter of travel documentaries.
From: Wikiquote (CC BY-SA 4.0)
From Wikidata (CC0)
(Later in my journey I was told of an outrageous but apparently successful attempt to bring tourists to Great Nicobar. During the monsoon torrential rain comes down spectacularly. A bright Indian entrepreneur advertised a tour for rich Arabs from the arid Gulf who could sit on their hotel balcony and watch rain for a week. It was a sell-out.)
He has had more hallucinations recently. He talks about ‘When that man was in the kitchen …’ and so on. Recently he locked the door in the evening, in case ‘those men’ got in. He knows by their accents that they are quite cultured, and they are apparently friendly, but it is frightening that they should be so real to him.
The bird life, was, as ever, of great interest to ship’s surgeon McCormick. On seeing hovering over the ship what he believed to be a new species of Lestris, or Arctic Yager, described by Audubon, the great American bird illustrator, as an ‘indefatigable teaser of the smaller gulls’, he took a pot-shot at it. His shot failed to despatch the bird cleanly and, after descending near the deck, it recovered and flew away with one leg broken. McCormick, unusually, felt compelled to justify himself: ‘For notwithstanding that my duties as ornithologist compel me to take the lives of these most beautiful and interesting creatures . . . I never do so without a sharp sting of pain and qualm of conscience, so fond am I of all the feathered race.’ So fond, indeed, that on the same night he recorded that ‘Between midnight and one a.m. I succeeded in adding two more of the elegant white petrel to my collection, one falling dead on the quarter-deck and the other on the gun-room skylight . . . a third I shot . . . fell overboard into the sea.
Enhance Your Quote Experience
Enjoy ad-free browsing, unlimited collections, and advanced search features with Premium.
With a cry of ‘Land Ahoy!’, Lieutenant Wood confirmed that not only had Erebus and Terror become the first sailing ships to break through the ice-pack, but they were now the first ships to come face-to-face with irrefutable proof that an Antarctic continent existed. Surprisingly, Ross’s first reaction was less than ecstatic. All he could see was that this ‘coastline’ had effectively blocked the way to his most coveted goal, the South Magnetic Pole. Nevertheless he was, like everyone else, humbled and overawed by what he saw as they drew closer to land. ‘We had a most enchanting view of . . . two magnificent ranges of mountains . . . The glaciers that filled their intervening valleys, and which descended from near the mountain summits, projected in many places several miles into the sea . . .The sky was a clear azure blue, with the most brilliant sunshine . . . all that could be desired for giving effect to such a magnificent panorama.’ For Joseph Hooker, it was simply ‘one of the most gorgeous sights I have ever witnessed’. And there was another cause for celebration. Measurements showed that Erebus and Terror had reached latitude 71°14'S, passing Captain Cook’s furthest south. ‘We have now but Weddell’s track to get beyond,’ wrote Captain Ross, referring to the whaling captain’s 74°15'S, a record that had stood since 1823.