garnet:

The opening sections of Martin’s biography are clogged with genealogical chronicles of the Garcías (the father’s family) and the Márquezes (the mother’s), snaking into the 19th century — a preposterously tangled story of cousins and noncousins united in wedlock, nonwedlock, near-incest, vendetta-mania and frontier trailblazing in the Colombian wilds[…]

He handcarried it all the way. sir. It took him 30 days.

'D'ye know a slap-up sort of button, when you see it?' said the youth. 'Don't look at mine, if you ain't a judge, because these lions' heads was made for men of taste: not snobs.'