Travel Books

PREFACE. This letter from the President of Bowdoin College is printed as an appropriate preface to the pages which follow. I thank you for the advanced sheets of the "Bowdoin Boys in Labrador." As Sallust says, "In primis arduum videtur res gestas scribere; quod facta dictis sunt exaequanda." In this case, the diction is equal to the deed: the clear and vivacious style of the writer is... more...

EXPLANATION. If nearly Forty Years' Residence in the Isle of Wight may be allowed in some degree to qualify an Artist for the office of Guide, the Author has a fair claim to public patronage,—for few could have had better opportunity of acquiring local information. He has endeavoured to render The Picture an intelligent Cicerone, without being too garrulous or grandiloquous,—but always... more...

CHAPTER I. We had sailed in a southeasternly direction from New York twelve days when we rounded Cape St. Roque, the easternmost point of South America. A line drawn due north from this point would pass through the Atlantic midway between Europe and America. If we had sailed directly south we should have touched the western instead of the eastern coast, for the reason that practically the entire... more...

CHAPTER I. A "NEW-CHUM'S" INTRODUCTION. Three months on board ship seems a long while to look forward to, yet it is but a short time to look back upon. Emigrants, being for the most part drawn from among dry-land-living populations, are apt to be daunted by the idea of a long voyage. People would be more ready, perhaps, to contemplate becoming colonists, were it not for that dreaded... more...

I A FEW GENERALITIES Stratford-on-Avon stands first on the itinerary of nearly every American who proposes to visit the historic shrines of Old England. Its associations with Britain's immortal bard and with our own gentle Geoffrey Crayon are not unfamiliar to the veriest layman, and no fewer than thirty thousand pilgrims, largely from America, visit the delightful old town each year. And who ever... more...

CHAPTER I THE MARKET-PLACE AND BELFRY—EARLY HISTORY OF BRUGES Every visitor to 'the quaint old Flemish city' goes first to the Market-Place. On Saturday mornings the wide space beneath the mighty Belfry is full of stalls, with white canvas awnings, and heaped up with a curious assortment of goods. Clothing of every description, sabots and leathern shoes and boots, huge earthenware jars,... more...

BY WAY OF INTRODUCTION Instructed in the autumn of 1912 to join the Bulgarian army, then mobilising for war against Turkey, as war correspondent for the London Morning Post, I made my preparations with the thought uppermost that I was going to a cut-throat country where massacre was the national sport and human life was regarded with no sentimental degree of respect. The Bulgarians, a generation ago,... more...

THE LAND How many boys or girls, I wonder, ever turn to their school atlas for amusement, or try to picture to themselves what manner of countries those might be whose strange and unfamiliar place-names so often make their geography lesson a difficulty? Yet there are few subjects, I think, which might be made more interesting than geography, and a map may often serve to suggest delightful fancies to a... more...

CHAPTER I This is the third day of sirocco, heavy-clouded, sunless. All the colour has gone out of Naples; the streets are dusty and stifling. I long for the mountains and the sea. To-morrow I shall leave by the Messina boat, which calls at Paola. It is now more than a twelvemonth since I began to think of Paola, and an image of the place has grown in my mind. I picture a little marina; a yellowish... more...

PREFACE. These papers on “Byeways in Palestine” are compiled from notes of certain journeys made during many years’ residence in that country; omitting the journeys made upon beaten roads, and through the principal towns, for the mere reason that they were such. Just what met the eye and ear was jotted down and is now revised after a lapse of time, without indulging much in meditation or... more...