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Mr. Isaacs by F. Marion (Francis Marion) Crawford
page 4 of 266 (01%)
noble type of the Aryan race, the qualities which have made that race
dominant were developed in the highest degree. The sequel, indeed, might
lead the ethnographer into a labyrinth of conjecture, but the story is
too tempting a one for me to forego telling it, although the said
ethnographer should lose his wits in striving to solve the puzzle.

In September, 1879, I was at Simla in the lower Himalayas,--at the time
of the murder of Sir Louis Cavagnari at Kabul,--being called there in
the interests of an Anglo-Indian newspaper, of which I was then editor.
In other countries, notably in Europe and in America, there are hundreds
of spots by the sea-shore, or on the mountain-side, where specific ills
may be cured by their corresponding antidotes of air or water, or both.
Following the aristocratic and holy example of the Bishops of Salzburg
for the last eight centuries, the sovereigns of the Continent are told
that the air and waters of Hofgastein are the only nenuphar for the
over-taxed brain in labour beneath a crown. The self-indulgent sybarite
is recommended to Ems, or Wiesbaden, or Aix-la-Chapelle, and the
quasi-incurable sensualist to Aix in Savoy, or to Karlsbad in Bohemia.
In our own magnificent land Bethesdas abound, in every state, from the
attractive waters of lotus-eating Saratoga to the magnetic springs of
Lansing, Michigan; from Virginia, the carcanct of sources, the heaving,
the warm, the hot sulphur springs, the white sulphur, the alum, to the
hot springs of Arkansas, the Ultima Thule of our migratory and
despairing humanity. But in India, whatever the ailing, low fever, high
fever, "brandy pawnee" fever, malaria caught in the chase of tigers in
the Terai, or dysentery imbibed on the banks of the Ganges, there is
only one cure, the "hills;" and chief of "hill-stations" is Simla.

On the hip rather than on the shoulder of the aspiring Himalayas,
Simla--or Shumla, as the natives call it--presents during the wet
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