Spanish adaptation of the Taino word for chief. 2 An Warsaw Subway Map Indian chief, especially in the Spanish West Indies and other parts of Latin Country during colonial and Warsaw Subway Map postcolonial times. Cajun. A corruption of Acadian, used to describe the descendants of the Acadians, who migrated to Louisiana after their expulsion from what would become the Maritime Provinces of Canada. Calabash. A variety of gourd that can be dried and used to make containers or utensils.
Urban Imaginaries
It seems appropriate to conclude a blog on re-imagining the city with several representations of the urban condition. While chosen at random, each vignette – written approximately 50 years apart, and from three different hemispheres – articulates a consciousness of place appropriate to the historical period and cultural disposition. The first is an observation by a well-known chronicler of urban life in one of the most globalized of cities. In 1879, Charles Dickens published this description of a district of London in his Dictionary of London. It was then known as Ratcliff Highway, part of the docks area, and close to present-day Wapping:
Ratcliff Highway – This, which until within the last few years was one of the sights of the metropolis, and almost unique in Europe as a scene of coarse riot and debauchery, is now chiefly noteworthy as an example of what may be done by effective police supervision thoroughly carried out. The dancing-rooms amid foreign cafes of the Highway are still well worth a visit from the student of human nature, and are each, for the most part, devoted almost exclusively to the accommodation of a single nationality. Thus at the Rose and Crown,’ near the western end of the Highway, the company will be principally Spanish and Maltese. At the Preussische Adler,’ just by the entrance into Wellclose-square, you will meet, as might be anticipated, German sailors; whilst Lawson’s, a little farther east, though kept by a German, finds its clientele among the Norwegian and Swedish sailors, who form no inconsiderable or despicable portion of the motley crews of our modern mercantile fleet. Over the way, a little farther down, is the Italian house, a quaint and quiet place, full of models and curios’ of every conceivable and inconceivable des cription, and nearly opposite the large and strikingly clean caravanserai, where a pretty, but anxious-looking Maid of Athens receives daily, with a hospitality whose cordiality hardly seems to smack of fear, any number of gift-bearing Greeks. Hard by Quashie’s music-hall is a narrow passage, dull and empty, even at the lively hour of 11 pm. through which, by devious ways, we penetrate at length to a squalid cul-de-sac At the bottom of this slough of grimy Despond is the little breathless garret where Johnny the Chinaman swelters night and day curled up on his gruesome couch, carefully toasting in the dim flame of a smoky lamp the tiny lumps of delight which shall transport the opium-smoker for awhile into his paradise. If you are only a casual visitor you will not care for much of Johnny’s company But if you visit Johnny as a customer, you pay your shilling, and pass duly off into elysium.
