Trapbois (Old), a miser in Alsatia. Even in his extreme age, “he was believed to understand the plucking of a ‘pigeon’ better than any man in Alsatia.”
Martha Trapbois, the miser’s daughter, a cold, decisive, masculine woman, who marries Richie Moniplies.--Sir W. Scott, The Fortunes of Nigel (time, James I.).
Trapper (The). One of the titles of Natty Bumpo, a character introduced into several of Cooper’s novels. In The Pioneers, he bears his own name, in others he is “The Trapper,” “The Deerslayer,” “The Pathfinder,” “The Hawk-eye” and “Leatherstocking.”
Traveller (The). The scheme of this poem is very simple: The poet supposes himself seated among Alpine solitudes, looking down upon a hundred kingdoms. He would fain find some spot where happiness can be attained, but the natives of each realm think their own the best; yet the amount of happiness in each is pretty well equal. To illustrate this, the poet describes the manners and government of Italy, Switzerland, France, Holland, and England.--O. Goldsmith (1764).
Traveller (Mr.), the stranger who tried to reason with Mr. Mopes and bring him back to society, but found the truth of the tinker’s remark, “When iron is thoroughly rotten, you cannot botch it.”--C. Dickens, A Christmas Number (1861).
Travellers’ Tales. Marco Polo says,
“Certain islands lie so far north in the Northern Ocean, that one going thither actually leaves the pole-star a trifle behind to the south.”
A Dutch skipper told Master Noxon, the hydrographer of Charles II., that he had himself sailed two degrees beyond the pole.
Maundeville says, in Prester John’s country is a sea of sand which ebbs and flows in great waves without one drop of water. This sea, says the knight of St. Alban’s, men find full of right good fish of most delicious eating.
At the time of the discovery of America by Columbus, many marvellous tales were rife in Spain. It was said that in one part of the coast of El Nombre de Dios, the natives had such long ears that one ear served for bed and the other for counterpane. This reminds one of Gwevyl mab Gwestad, one of whose lips hung down to his waist, and the other covered his head like a cowl. Another tale was that one of the crew of Columbus had come across a people who lived on sweet scents alone, and were killed by foul smells. This invention was hardly original, inasmuch as both Plutarch and Pliny tell us of an Indian people who lived on sweet odors, and Democrĭtos lived for several days on the mere effluvia of hot bread. Another tale was that the noses of these smell-feeders were so huge that their heads were all nose. We are also told of one-eyed men; of men who carried their heads under one of their arms; of others whose head was in their breast; of others who were conquered, not by arms, but by their priests holding up before them a little ivory crucifix--a sort of Christian version of the taking of Jericho by the blast of the rams’ horns of the Levites in the time of Joshua.