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...

A Hero who rose from the Ranks. More than a hundred years ago, there lived a man who dwelt in a mud cottage in the county of York; his name was Cook. He was a poor, honest labourer—a farm servant. This man was the father of that James Cook who lived to be a captain in the British Navy, and who, before he was killed, became one of the best and greatest navigators that ever spread his sails to the... more...

Chapter I Preparations for the Start—Our Dry Goods Relished by the Cattle—I Become a “Compadre”—Beautiful Northern Sonora—Mexican Muleteers Preferable in Their Own Country—Apache Stories—Signs of Ancient Inhabitants—Arrival at Upper Yaqui River—Opata Indians now Mexicanised—A Flourishing Medical Practice—Mexican Manners—Rock-carvings—How Certain Cacti Propagate. Heavy floods... more...

INTRODUCTION INCE the first and second editions of "In the Footprints of the Padres" appeared, many things have transpired. San Francisco has been destroyed and rebuilt, and in its holocaust most of the old landmarks mentioned in the pages that follow as then existing, have been obliterated. Since then, too, the gentle heart, much of whose story is told herein, has been hushed in death. Charles... more...

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...

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...

DEDICATION TOTHE OTHER MANMR PHILIP KERSHAW There were once two men. They were men of might and breeding. They were young, they were intolerant, they were hale. Were there for humans as there is for dogs a tribunal to determine excellence; were there judges of anthropoidal points and juries to, give prizes for manly race, vigour, and the rest, undoubtedly these two men would have gained the gold and... more...

INTRODUCTION The hope with which these pages are written is that their readers may be enabled to see a little deeper into that problem of the relation of the West with Asia which the historian of the future will unquestionably regard as the greatest of our time. I lived for four and a half years in Japan. This book is a record of many of the things I saw and experienced and some of the things I was... more...

From the Bay of Bengal and the Gulf of Siam the Malay Peninsula, once known as the Golden Chersonese, jets out into the Indian Ocean like an arm stretched forth to unite once more within its embrace the innumerable isles that belt its coasts and that have probably been severed from the mainland by the combined force of Time and Sea. In these surrounding islands, some as large as continents, others as... more...

THE ROAD TO ROME FROM VENICE. I. LEAVING VENICE. We did not know, when we started from home in Venice, on the 8th of November, 1864, that we had taken the longest road to Rome. We thought that of all the proverbial paths to the Eternal City that leading to Padua, and thence through Ferrara and Bologna to Florence, and so down the sea-shore from Leghorn to Civita Vecchia, was the best, the briefest, and... more...