Travel Books

RUSSIAN RAMBLES.I. PASSPORTS, POLICE, AND POST-OFFICE IN RUSSIA. We imported into Russia, untaxed, undiscovered by the custom-house officials, a goodly stock of misadvice, misinformation, apprehensions, and prejudices, like most foreigners, albeit we were unusually well informed, and confident that we were correctly posted on the grand outlines of Russian life, at least. We were forced to begin very... more...

I was brought up in Rome, from the age of twelve to that of seventeen, but did not return there for many years afterwards. I discovered it anew for myself, while knowing all its sites and its details; discovered, that is to say, its meaning to my thoughts and feelings. Hence, in all my impressions, a mixture of familiarity and of astonishment; a sense, perhaps answering to the reality, that Rome—it... more...

A DREAM OF ANTICIPATION The King of Cork was a funny shipAs ever ploughed the maine:She kep' no log, she went whar she liked;So her Cap'n warn't to blaime. The Management was funnier still.We always thought it dandy—Till it wrecked us on the Golden Horn,When we meant to land at Kandy. The Cap'n ran the boat ashoreIn aerated waters;The Purser died by swallowin' gas,Thus... more...

BANDORA, BY THE SEA, October 1885. The unsheltered sea heaves and heaves and blanches into foam. It sets me thinking of some tied-up monster straining at its bonds, in front of whose gaping jaws we build our homes on the shore and watch it lashing its tail. What immense strength, with waves swelling like the muscles of a giant! From the beginning of creation there has been this feud between land and... more...

THE PYRAMIDS Why do you come to Egypt? Do you come to gain a dream, or to regain lost dreams of old; to gild your life with the drowsy gold of romance, to lose a creeping sorrow, to forget that too many of your hours are sullen, grey, bereft? What do you wish of Egypt? The Sphinx will not ask you, will not care. The Pyramids, lifting their unnumbered stones to the clear and wonderful skies, have held,... more...

THE VOYAGE WEDNESDAY, June 26, 1754.—On this day the most melancholy sun I had ever beheld arose, and found me awake at my house at Fordhook. By the light of this sun I was, in my own opinion, last to behold and take leave of some of those creatures on whom I doted with a mother-like fondness, guided by nature and passion, and uncured and unhardened by all the doctrine of that philosophical school... more...

CHAPTER I. CHÂTEAU DE CHAMBORD. We walked through the empty galleries and deserted rooms where spiders spin their cobwebs over the salamanders of Francis the First. One is overcome by a feeling of distress at the sight of this poverty which has no grandeur. It is not absolute ruin, with the luxury of blackened and mouldy débris, the delicate embroidery of flowers, and the drapery of waving vines... more...

ACROSS EUROPE Stockholm to Berlin Our journey begins at Stockholm, the capital of my native country. Leaving Stockholm by train in the evening, we travel all night in comfortable sleeping-cars and arrive next morning at the southernmost point of Sweden, the port of Trelleborg, where the sunlit waves sweep in from the Baltic Sea. Here we might expect to have done with railway travelling, and we rather... more...

DEDICATORY LETTER TOM. ARETZ, TAILOR, ETC.27, RUE RICHELIEU, PARIS.SIR,—It becomes every man in his station to acknowledge and praise virtue wheresoever he may find it, and to point it out for the admiration and example of his fellow-men. Some months since, when you presented to the writer of these pages a small account for coats and pantaloons manufactured by you, and when you were met by a... more...

CHAPTER I. —London to Baku—Oil-wells and works—Persians abroad—Caspian steamers—Caspian salmon—Enzelli lagoon—The Jews in Persia—Resht trade—'My eye'—Russian road—The tobacco 'strike,' 1891—Collapse of Tobacco Régie—Moulla opposition. The Persians, as a people still nomadic in their habits, and much given to long pilgrimages, have good knowledge of the... more...