In this, a
landslide having covered the place where it was buried, he was
unsuccessful.
But Knight's book is the only source of accurate information
concerning Trinidad, and in writing his prospectus it is evident that
Harden-Hickey was forced to borrow from it freely. Knight
himself says that the most minute and accurate description of
Trinidad is to be found in the "Frank Mildmay" of Captain
Marryat. He found it so easy to identify each spot mentioned in the
novel that he believes the author of "Midshipman Easy" himself
touched there.
After seizing Trinidad, Harden-Hickey rounded the Cape and made
north to Japan, China, and India. In India he became interested in
Buddhism, and remained for over a year questioning the priests of
that religion and studying its tenets and history.
On his return to Paris, in 1890, he met Miss Annie Harper Flagler,
daughter of John H. Flagler. A year later, on St. Patrick's Day,
1891, at the Fifth Avenue Presbyterian Church, Miss Flagler
became the Baroness Harden-Hickey. The Rev. John Hall married
them.
For the next two years Harden-Hickey lived in New York, but so
quietly that, except that he lived quietly, it is difficult to find out
anything concerning him. The man who, a few years before, had
delighted Paris with his daily feuilletons, with his duels, with his
forty-two lawsuits, who had been the master of revels in the Latin
Quarter, in New York lived almost as a recluse, writing a book on
Buddhism.
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