It shuts out the sky and the horizon

The first glimpse that most travellers now get of the Pyramids is from the window of the railway carriage as they come from Alexandria; and it is not impressive. It does not take one's breath away, for instance, like a first sight of the Alps from the high level of the Neufchâtel line, or the outline of the Acropolis at Athens as one first recognises it from the sea. The well-known triangular forms look small and shadowy, and are too familiar to be in any way startling. And the same, I think, is true of every distant view of them,—that is, of every view which is too distant to afford the means of scaling them against other objects. It is only in approaching them, and observing how they grow with every foot of the road, that one begins to feel they are not so familiar after all. But when at last the edge of the desert is reached, and the long sand-slope climbed, and the rocky platform gained, and the Great Pyramid in all its unexpected bulk and majesty towers close above one's head, the effect is as sudden as it is overwhelming. It shuts out the sky and the horizon. It shuts out all the other Pyramids. It shuts out everything but the sense of awe and wonder.

A. Edwards, A Thousand Miles Up The Nile (1877), 14

The timing, manner and mood of a private assault on a new town are a serious matter.

The timing, manner and mood of a private assault on a new town are a serious matter. If the town should be one of the world's wonders, it is crucial. To arrive at Constantinople by air, for instance, and reach the city by the airport bus is to be swallowed b the saddest and most squalid of Balkan slums. It must be attacked from the sea and the haggish but indestructible splendour, crckling with all the atmospherics of its long history, allowed to loo slowly across the shining Propontis.

P.L. Fermor, Mani (1958), 301

It is an astonishing contrast to be going at fifteen miles a day one day and at fifteen hundred the next

It is an astonishing contrast to be going at fifteen miles a day one day and at fifteen hundred the next. I had so got into the habit of moving at the same rate as people did a thousand years ago, with the camels, that now I found it difficult to realize I was every day flying over new countries inhabited by different races.

E. Maillart, Forbidden journey (1935), 310

More royal courtiers died from drowning than through fighting for the crown

The relatively rudimentary nature of medieval ship and sail design also meant that seafarers routinely found themselves at the mercy of the elements, praying for calm seas and favourable winds. Shipwrecks were alarmingly common - indeed, it has been estimated that, in the mid-twelfth century, more royal courtiers died from drowning than through fighting for the crown - so few made this journey without a degree of trepidation.

T. Asbridge, The greatest knight: the remarkable life of William Marshal, the power behind five English thrones (2015), 35