Travel Books

FOREWORD It is a curious thing, when you stop to think about it, that, though of late the public has been deluged with books on the South Seas, though the shelves of the public libraries sag beneath the volumes devoted to China, Japan, Korea, next to nothing has been written, save by a handful of scientifically-minded explorers, about those far-flung, gorgeous lands, stretching from the southern... more...

PROLOGUE. The traveller who reaches those enchanted gates of the Far East which swing open at the palm-girt shores of Ceylon, enters upon a new range of thought and feeling. The first sight of tropical scenery generally awakens a passionate desire for further experiences of the vast Archipelago in the Southern Seas which girdles the Equator with an emerald zone. Lured onward by the scented breeze in... more...

CHAPTER I. Introductory. — First View of New Zealand. — First Sight of the Natives, and First Sensations experienced by a mere Pakeha. — A Maori Chief's Notions of Trading in the Old Times. — A Dissertation on "Courage." — A few Words on Dress. — The Chief's Soliloquy. — The Maori Cry of Welcome. Ah! those good old times, when first I came to... more...

PREFACE "Beyond doubt the finished historian must be a traveller: he must see with his own eyes the true look of a wide land; he must see, too, with his eyes the very spots where great events happened; he must mark the lie of a city, and take in, as far as a non-technical eye can, all that is special about a battle-field." So wrote Mr. Freeman in his Methods of Historical Study, and he... more...

Preface Forty years ago John Muir wrote to a friend; "I am hopelessly and forever a mountaineer. . . . Civilization and fever, and all the morbidness that has been hooted at me, have not dimmed my glacial eyes, and I care to live only to entice people to look at Nature's loveliness." How gloriously he fulfilled the promise of his early manhood! Fame, all unbidden, wore a path to his door,... 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...

It is hardly necessary to observe that, after the able and interesting account of the proceedings and result of the British Embassy to the court of China, by the late Sir George Staunton (who was no less amiable for liberality of sentiment, than remarkable for vigour of intellect) it would be an idle, and, indeed, a superfluous undertaking, in any other person who accompanied the embassy, to dwell on... more...

CHAPTER I ON JOURNEYS THROUGH THE STATESOn journeys through the States we start,... We willing learners of all, teachers of all, lovers of all.We dwell a while in every city and town ...—Walt Whitman. Had my companion and I never crossed the continent together, had we never gone "abroad at home," I might have curbed my impatience at the beginning of our second voyage. But from the time we... more...

CHAPTER XI. EARLY ENGLISH VOYAGES OF DISCOVERY TO AMERICA. INTRODUCTION. Although we have already, in the Introduction to the Second Chapter of this Book, Vol. III. p. 346. given some notices of the voyages of John and Sebastian Cabot to America in the service of Henry VII. and VIII. it appears proper on the present occasion to insert a full report of every thing that is now known of these early... more...

CHAPTER ONE. Peace--Rumours of War-Retrenchment--A Cloud in the far West--A Distant Settlement-Personal--The Purchase System--A Cable-gram--Away to the West IT was a period of universal peace over the wide world. There was not a shadow of war in the North, the South, the East, or the West. There was not even a Bashote in South Africa, a Beloochee in Scinde, a Bhoottea, a Burmese, or any other of the... more...