Reise in den Orient (1846) is the German biblical scholar Constantin von Tischendorf's recollection of his journey to Egypt, Israel and Greece at the beginning of the 1840s. The work is a travel diary that vividly describes Tischendorf's meeting with mythological places and impressive men, and a learned account of the Christian history of the area. Volume 2 of this work largely focuses on Tischendorf's time in Israel. He writes about Jesus' crucifixion and Golgotha's significance, and gives an historical account of Jerusalem as the centre of all religions. He pays particular attention to the Anglican Diocese of Jerusalem, which leads him to explain the differences between German and English Protestantism. On his return journey, he is enraptured by Smyrna and Constantinople, and enjoys visiting the Athenian Acropolis and the other ruins of the ancient city.
The publications of the Hakluyt Society (founded in 1846) made available edited (and sometimes translated) early accounts of exploration. The first series, which ran from 1847 to 1899, consists of 100 books containing published or previously unpublished works by authors from Christopher Columbus to Sir Francis Drake, and covering voyages to the New World, to China and Japan, to Russia and to Africa and India. Vasco da Gama (c. 1460–1524) was a Portuguese explorer who commanded the first European expedition to sail directly to India. This voyage and his combination of force and diplomacy while in India was integral to Portugal's success as a colonising power in the early sixteenth century. Translated and edited by E. G. Ravenstein, this volume contains an anonymous journal which is the last surviving first-hand account of Vasco da Gama's historic voyage. Contemporary diplomatic reports concerning the voyage are also included in this book.
H. A. MacMichael was a member of the Anglo-Egyptian Sudan government between 1905 and 1933. This ethnographic work first published in 1922 is the culmination of almost twenty years' ethnological research conducted while H. A MacMichael was stationed in various parts of Sudan. This ethnography provides detailed histories of the origins, movements and degrees of relation between indigenous groups in Sudan based on oral histories gained from interviews with local people and Sudanese genealogical records known as 'nisbas'. These records provide a valuable insight into the construction and fluidity of ethnic identity at a local and regional level and have been widely used as a base for subsequent investigations concerning identity in Sudan.
The Lewis and Clark expedition of 1804–1806 across America from Pittsburg to the Pacific and back was the third recorded transcontinental journey. President Jefferson had negotiated the Louisiana Purchase of over two million square kilometres from the French in 1803, and the aim of the expedition was to investigate the territory involved. He commissioned a Corps of Discovery as a scientific and military expedition to survey the acquisition, appointing his aide Meriwether Lewis (1774–1809) to lead it. It was hoped to discover that the Missouri and other rivers could be used for transcontinental communication and transport, and to assess the natural resources of the area. Some of the party returned east with specimens, reports and a map, while the remainder reached the Pacific in December 1805. Volume 1 covers the departure and contacts with various Indian tribes, as far as Great Falls, Montana, in June 1805.
In 1844 Charles Dickens (1812–70) and his family moved to Italy for a year, eventually settling in Genoa. This book, Dickens' second travel memoir, describes his experience of travelling through France and exploring Italy. Based on letters to friends, particularly John Forster, it was first published in instalments from January to March 1846 in the Daily News (a new radical newspaper which Dickens himself founded and briefly edited). The edition in book form reissued here appeared in May 1846. The main focus of the book is the northern regions of Italy, including Tuscany, Milan and Venice. It also includes substantial sections on Rome and Naples as well as a brief sketch of Switzerland. Landscapes, architecture, lodgings and food are described with selective but penetrating detail. The shrewd social observations characteristic of Dickens' novels are found here, especially in his critical remarks about poverty, popular religion and the Catholic clergy.
The Open Polar Sea was one of the most prevalent myths of nineteenth-century Arctic exploration. Several explorers had hypothesised a stretch of ice-free sea between Greenland and the North Pole, and several expeditions set out in search of it. One of these was planned and led by Isaac Israel Hayes (1832–81), an American physician and explorer. This account of the expedition, first published in 1866, was compiled from his journals. Having left Boston in a small schooner so overloaded with equipment that a passenger could lean over the deck rail and touch the sea, Hayes and his crew almost faced shipwreck off Nova Scotia and regularly saw their cabins flooded on their way to Greenland, where, in calmer weather, they encountered the first palatial ice floes. Written for the general reader rather than for scientific purposes, this book still serves as an accessible, entertaining guide to the voyage.
Explorer and naturalist Thomas Thomson (1817–78) led an intrepid life. He started his career as an assistant surgeon with the East India Company and soon became a curator of the Asiatic Society's museum in Bengal. He was sent to Afghanistan in 1840 during the First Anglo-Afghan War, and was captured but managed to escape as he was about to be sold as a slave. Undaunted by this misfortune, he accepted a perilous mission to define the boundary between Kashmir and Chinese Tibet in 1847. During his eighteen-month journey, Thomson explored the Kashmir territories and went as far north as the barren Karakoram Pass. He collected valuable geographical and geological information as well as a wealth of botanical specimens. He describes his findings in minute detail in this account, first published in 1852. Thomson later became a Fellow of the Linnean Society, the Royal Geographical Society and the Royal Society.
John Davy (1790–1868), the younger brother of the chemist Sir Humphry Davy, published this account of Ceylon (present-day Sri Lanka) in 1821. An army surgeon and later Fellow of the Royal Society, he also wrote books on the Ionian Islands and the West Indies (also reissued in this series) and edited his brother's collected works. This book is a detailed study based on interviews with the islanders and Davy's own observations during his four-year visit. Part I is an overview of the natural history of the island - including its geography, geology, zoology and climate - as well as its people, demography, political system and culture, including architecture, craftwork and languages. Part II details Davy's travels within the country. With a number of beautiful reproductions of native drawings, as well as Davy's own, the work remains a rich resource for the insights of a Victorian polymath into early nineteenth-century Ceylon.
The Norwegian explorer and ethnographer Carl Lumholtz (1851–1922) wrote the influential ethnographic studies Among Cannibals and Unknown Mexico (both reissued in this series) after his journeys through Australia and Mexico respectively. In 1913, Lumholtz went on his final expedition, which aimed to explore the large parts of Borneo unknown to the rest of the world. Interested by tales of head-hunting, he wanted to spend time with the indigenous people and conduct research. Originally published in 1920, this two-volume work is Lumholtz's account of his expedition. Many of the illustrations in the work are from photographs taken by the author, including pictures of members of the different tribes he stayed with. Volume 1 begins with an overview of Borneo and goes on to describe the expedition's journey into the jungle, and the various ceremonies experienced during the journey, which provide interesting insights into tribal life and belief systems.
An early example of the travel-writing genre, William Bosman's collection of letters, originally written in Dutch and first published in English in 1705, describes the geography and political and natural history of the coast of Guinea. This 1907 edition is presented as a facsimile of the 1705 version, retaining the original typography. Bosman (born in 1672) went to Africa at the age of sixteen in the service of the Dutch West India Company, and spent fourteen years on the Gold Coast. This collection of twenty letters, written to his uncle in the Netherlands, remains an important source of information about this area of west Africa in the late seventeenth and early eighteenth centuries. Bosman's accounts are highly descriptive, and his writings cover all aspects of the area, from its flora and fauna to its political, social and legal systems, its enterprising natives and its climate and diseases.
Scottish missionary Alexander Williamson (1829–90) spent several years preaching in northern China. From 1863 to 1866, he was there as the first overseas agent of the National Bible Society of Scotland. During this time, he travelled as far as Mongolia and Manchuria, a considerable undertaking in those days. He later became secretary of the Society for the Diffusion of Christian and General Knowledge among the Chinese, and formed the Chinese Book and Tract Society in 1884. In this illustrated two-volume work, first published in 1870, he records the observations he made during extensive travels that took him via the home of Confucius while propagating the Bible in Chinese script. Volume 1 offers introductory remarks on China's physical geography, people, culture, government and foreign influences. It also provides descriptions of the northern Chinese provinces and accounts of travels starting from Shandong province.
Clement Robert Markham (1830–1916) was a geographer who took part in one of the many Arctic expeditions launched to search for missing explorer John Franklin (1786–1847). This account, published in 1853, was written in response to criticism of the expedition. They had found some evidence of Franklin's route - he had set off in May 1845 to find the North-West Passage - but returned to Britain without any of the survivors. Markham gives a brief history of Arctic exploration, but the majority of the book recounts the expedition's efforts to find Franklin. The crew endured a harsh winter and sailed in iceberg-laden waters along the coast of Greenland, looking for clues of Franklin's whereabouts. They also spent some time exploring the Parry Islands (the present-day Queen Elizabeth Islands). Markham's account of the rescue mission provides insight into the little-known and often dangerous world of Arctic explorers.
Sir Samuel Baker (1821–93) was one of the most famous Victorian explorers and hunters. First published in two illustrated volumes in 1866, this account of his most celebrated expedition is amongst the most important works of its type. Baker promises 'to take the reader by the hand, and lead him step by step … through scorching deserts and thirsty sands; through swamp and jungle … until I bring him, faint with the wearying journey, to that high cliff … from which he shall look down upon the vast Albert Lake and drink with me from the sources of the Nile!' Volume 1 covers the first two years of the expedition, from Cairo to southern Sudan. Leading a party of 96 people, including his wife, and dealing with Arab duplicity, native aggression, and frequent mutinies amongst his porters, he maintains his resolve and writes with clarity and great colour.
Reise in den Orient (1846) is the German biblical scholar Constantin von Tischendorf's recollection of his journey to Egypt, Israel and Greece at the beginning of the 1840s. The work is a travel diary that vividly describes Tischendorf's meeting with mythological places and impressive men, and a learned account of the Christian history of the area. Volume 1 describes his encounter with Ibrahim Pasha and the humanism of Mehmet Ali. Tischendorf undertakes research in the Library of the Patriarch of Alexandria and visits the pyramids, only to compare them with one of the great German cathedrals. At the Monastery of Saint Catherine on Mount Sinai, Tischendorf makes an extraordinary and significant discovery - a fourth-century manuscript, one of the main witnesses to the Septuagint. Thereafter he sets off for Jerusalem and en route takes delight in the fascinating and ancient traditions of the Bedouins, and their camels.
H. A. MacMichael was a member of the Anglo-Egyptian Sudan government between 1905 and 1933. This two-volume work, first published in 1922, is the culmination of almost twenty years' ethnological research conducted while MacMichael was stationed in various parts of Sudan. It provides detailed histories of the origins, movements and degrees of relation between indigenous groups in Sudan, based on oral histories gained from interviews with local people, and on Sudanese genealogical records known as 'nisbas'. These records provide a valuable insight into the construction and fluidity of ethnic identity at a local and regional level, and have been widely used as a basis for subsequent investigations concerning identity in Sudan. Volume 1 discusses pre-Islamic and contemporary indigenous groups. This book contains opinions on ethnicity which were acceptable at the time it was first published.
George Augustus Selwyn (1809–1878) was the first Anglican Bishop of New Zealand, with Selwyn College, Cambridge later named in his honour. New Zealand was declared an independent British colony in 1841 and the Diocese of New Zealand was established in the same year. After graduating from St. John's College, Cambridge in 1831, Selwyn had been ordained priest in 1834 and consecrated as the first Bishop of New Zealand in 1841. This volume, first published in 1844, contains a series of journals and letters written by Selwyn during his first two years in New Zealand. He provides an intimate and detailed description of the organisation and society of the new colony and the growth of new settlements including Auckland and Wellington. He also describes the landscape and lives of the Maori in remote areas mostly untouched by colonisation, providing a fascinating account of the early history of colonial New Zealand.
The French explorer, author and legislator Gabriel Bonvalot (1853–1933) received funding from the French government to lead two expeditions to Central Asia in the 1880s. This two-volume English translation by C. B. Pitman of the French original was published in 1889 and is a richly illustrated account of the second of the two Asian expeditions, in which Bonvalot and the scientist Guillaume Capus attempted to enter Afghanistan. Although the party was detained and sent back to Samarkand upon entering Afghanistan, they refused to concede defeat, as Bonvalot was determined to reach India via a trail believed to run across the Pamir and Hindu Kush mountains. Volume 1 describes the journey from France to Samarkand via Tehran, and the checkpoint at the Afghan border. In Volume 2 the party reaches the remote Kingdom of Chatral, but is imprisoned again. Eventually, the British allow the expedition to enter India.
Henry Duff Traill (1842–1900) was a prolific journalist, satirist and author. The son of a magistrate, he was called to the Bar in 1869 but began working as a journalist at the Yorkshire Post soon afterwards. He contributed to several newspapers, acting as chief political leader writer at The Daily Telegraph from 1882 to 1897 and editing The Observer for two years. He later became the editor of Literature, holding this post until his death. Among his diverse published works were six biographies, of which the most in-depth was that of Arctic explorer Sir John Franklin. Published in 1896 and drawing on personal documents provided by the Franklin family, it provides a picture of Franklin's character and personal life, alongside a detailed account of his career. Written fifty years after Franklin's presumed death, this work also covers the aftermath of his final ill-fated voyage in search of a north-west passage.
Published posthumously in 1889, this journal records the 1850–5 expedition undertaken by naval officer and navigator Sir Richard Collinson (1811–83) to attempt to discover the fate of Sir John Franklin's expedition by entering the hypothetical North-West Passage from the 'other side', via Bering Strait. Franklin, the famous Polar explorer, disappeared on an expedition to discover the Passage in 1845, and no fewer than thirty attempts were made between 1847 and 1859 to investigate what had happened to his 129-strong party. Collinson set out in command of HMS Enterprise in 1850, and his ship, which passed three successive winters in the Arctic, came closest to the place where Franklin's expedition was believed to have ended. Collinson was awarded a Gold Medal by the Royal Geographical Society in 1858 for making a significant contribution to the geographical knowledge of the area, and he was knighted in 1875.
In 1875, Sir George Strong Nares (1831–1915) set out for the Arctic in command of the ships Alert and Discovery, hoping to reach the North Pole and find the rumoured Open Polar Sea that surrounded it. The Official Report, published in 1876, recounts his fifteenth-month journey in lively and often harrowing detail, describing freezing temperatures, frostbite and scurvy, vast, uncharted landscapes and treacherous, ice-choked waterways. It records the progress of the British Arctic Expedition with the scrupulous detail of a ship's log, providing valuable insights into the logistical complexities and human costs of Polar exploration. 'We had arrived on the shore of the Arctic Ocean finding it exactly the opposite of an Open Polar Sea', Nares notes ruefully. A two-volume popular account of the voyage, published in 1878, is also reissued in this series.
