Travel Books

THE GREAT ELIZABETHAN NAVIGATORS The map of Canada offers to the eye and to the imagination a vast country more than three thousand miles in width. Its eastern face presents a broken outline to the wild surges of the Atlantic. Its western coast commands from majestic heights the broad bosom of the Pacific. Along its southern boundary is a fertile country of lake and plain and woodland, loud already... more...

A WATCH-NIGHT SERVICE IN SAN FRANCISCO How much bitter experience a man keeps to himself, let the experienced say, for they only know. For my own part I am conscious that it rarely occurs to me to mention some things which happened either in England or out of it, and that if I do, it is only to pass them over casually as mere facts that had no profound effect upon me. But the importance of any hardship... more...

LETTER I. VOYAGE.— ARRIVAL AT NEW YORK.— BURNING OF QUARANTINE BUILDINGS.— CABLE REJOICINGS.— DESCRIPTION OF THE TOWN. New York, September 3, 1858. We landed here yesterday afternoon, at about six o'clock, after a very prosperous voyage; and, as the Southampton mail goes to-morrow, I must begin this letter to you to-night. I had fully intended writing to you daily during the voyage, but I... more...

CHAPTER XI. We are getting foreignized rapidly and with facility. We are getting reconciled to halls and bedchambers with unhomelike stone floors and no carpets—floors that ring to the tread of one's heels with a sharpness that is death to sentimental musing. We are getting used to tidy, noiseless waiters, who glide hither and thither, and hover about your back and your elbows like butterflies,... 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...

INTRODUCTION. The discovery of a continental island like Australia was not a deed that could be performed in a day. Many years passed away, and many voyages to these shores of ours were undertaken by the leading maritime nations of Europe, before the problematic and mysterious TERRA AUSTRALIS INCOGNITA of the ancients became known, even in a summary way, and its insularity and separation from other... more...

The Priuiledges graunted by the Emperour of Russia to the English merchants of that company: obteined the 22. of September, Anno 1567. by M. Anthony Ienkinson. One onely strengthener of all things, and God without beginning, which was before the world, the Father, the Sonne, and the holy Ghost, our onely God in Trinitie, and maker of all things whom we worship in all things, and in all places, the doer... more...

CHAPTER I. IN PERSPECTIVE. "In fortune's empire blindly thus we go;We wander after pathless destiny,Whose dark resorts since prudence cannot know,In vain it would provide for what shall be." A trip to the Pyrenees is not in the Grand Tour. It is not even in any southerly extension of the Grand Tour. A proposition to exploit them meets a dubious reception. Pictures arise of desolate gorges;... more...

It is your human environment that makes climate.—Pudd'nhead Wilson's New Calendar.Sept. 15—Night. Close to Australia now. Sydney 50 miles distant. That note recalls an experience. The passengers were sent for, to come up in the bow and see a fine sight. It was very dark. One could not follow with the eye the surface of the sea more than fifty yards in any direction it dimmed away and... more...

PREFACE. Having a large circle of friends who feel interested in my American trip, the propriety of publishing my observations, to avoid going over the same ground again and again, was suggested by one of them—a hint with which I have complied. I can say, with the strictest truth, that I have not revised or altered any impression formed at the moment. Indeed, I never saw these Notes from the time... more...