Travel narrative

“ When people were compelled to travel slowly, they could take with them, and had time to read and digest full narratives of all they were about to see. It was by no means impossible to carry in the lumbering carriage, or to read during the leisurely journey, a whole library of such voluminous and now forgotten books as the Modern Traveller. ”

“ Travel, according to my experience, does not exactly correspond to the idea one gets of it out of most books of travels. I am thinking of travel as it was when I made the Grand Tour, especially in Italy. Memory is a net; one finds it full of fish when he takes it from the brook ”

“ Few of the simpler sense-impressions of travel remain more intimately and vividly associated with the memory of a strange land than sounds,—sounds of the open country. Only the traveller knows how Nature’s voices—voices of forest and river and plain—vary according to zone; and it is nearly always some local peculiarity of their tone or character that appeals to feeling and penetrates into memory,—giving us the sensation of the foreign and the far-away. ”

“ True travel is when a man or woman visits a strange country and carries back with him, or her, to be remembered forever, impressions of the people and customs of that country—valuable impressions that make his or her life fuller, wider, more in sympathy with the great world of fellow-men. ”

“ In travel, the little hardships and vexations bring the novelties and comforts into stronger relief, and make the voyager’s happiness more real. It is an excellent trait of human nature that the traveler can remember with increased vividness the pleasing features of his journey while he forgets their opposites. ”

“ We need to know of the means of travel, of the state of the roads and where they ran, of the inns and how one fared in them, of fashionable society and how it impressed the tourist, as well as the impression the tourist made upon society: in short, in so far as is possible in a book that must touch many things lightly if at all, we must endeavor to follow the tourist from place to place and see with him some of the sights that most interested him. ”

“ The true traveller is unselfish. Though to him it is food, breath, a renewal of life, a fresh existence, to travel,—half his pleasure is to carry home from his wanderings, to an English fireside, a tale of other lands. ”

“ When the attention of a reader is invited to the narrative of a voyage, however interesting and curious in itself, which carries him back to a remote period, it is but reasonable that he should have explained to him the position which such a narrative, arbitrarily selected, holds in the history of the exploration of the country treated of. ”

“ At the end of a long journey it is natural to review the stages of the way that has been traversed. We resume the impressions made upon our mind, and extract that element of generality from recollection, which the rapid succession of scenes, incidents and interests denied to the experience of travel. ”

“ The fact is, that in travel one is almost as much dependent upon imagination and memory as he is at home. Somehow, we seldom get near enough to anything. The interest of all this coast which we had come to inspect was mainly literary and historical. ”

“ To such tourists Madame de Stael’s definition of travel—Le voyage, un triste plaisir—cannot, of course, apply. Their whole journey through life is indeed singularly placid, conducing to health, and extreme longevity ”

“ No "maid and valet affectionate in the rumble." All the pomp and circumstance, all the ease and calm, of Travel have vanished, and with them all sense of independence and [206] responsibility. The modern traveller is shot like a bullet through a tunnel, or hauled like a parcel up a hill. He certainly sees the world at very little cost, but he sees it under wonderfully uncomfortable conditions. ”

“ Books of travel will give you pictures, Perry, of things that there are in this world only a few hours’ or a few days’ journey away, but the books of travel that you and I are reading, my boy, will give pictures of scenes that no railway train can reach, and will reveal oceans that no steamship or sailing craft can cross. ”

“ One may travel at home in a most literal sense, and be always learning history, geography, botany, or biography—whatever one chooses.
I have had a good deal of journeying in my life, and taken great delight in it, but I have never taken greater delight than in my rides and drives and tramps and voyages within the borders of my native town. There is always something fresh, something to be traced or discovered, something particularly to be remembered. One grows rich in memories and associations. ”

“ TRAVELLING COMPANIONS All the earth is seamed with roads, and all the sea is furrowed with the tracks of ships, and over all the roads and all the waters a continuous stream of people passes up and down—travelling, as they say, for their pleasure. ”

“ What travel will give is familiarity with other nations: it will reveal to you mountains of strange shape, or unfamiliar tracts of plain, or valleys that are watered by ever-flowing springs, or the characteristics of some river that comes to our attention. ”

“ Travel is brought home to us, and we visit in spirit every grove and hamlet that tempts us in the distance. Sehnsucht—the passion for what is ever beyond—is livingly expressed in that white riband of possible travel that severs the uneven country; not a ploughman following his plough up the shining furrow, not the blue smoke of any cottage in a hollow, but is brought to us with a sense of nearness and attainability by this wavering line of junction. ”

“ Travel was regarded as an essential finish of one's education, whether one traveled alone or with a tutor. The fashion of travel once established, it often tempted men, and even women, of mature years to undertake extended journeys. The itinerary, of course, varied somewhat according to personal tastes and special needs, but in general the regions visited by tourists bom on the Continent were substantially the same as those that attracted Englishmen. ”

“ In countries like those we shall visit, the impressions of the first explorers are often more interesting and instructive than those of the latest tourist or naturalist, for such impressions have about them a freshness and an originality—often a quaintness and a simplicity—that are entirely absent from modern works of travel. ”

“ Each has its own charm, its own lesson. Mykênê is the special goal of our pilgrimage, the object which—even putting modern discoveries apart—would of itself fully reward a journey from the Western world. ”

“ In both these ways, travel is good and widens the mind: and here, as in his history, we can distinguish the two motives. One is practical and propagandist, the other poetic, the passion for knowing and understanding. Travel, considered under these heads, gives the observant mind a fund of comparison and information upon agricultural economy, modes of religion, political forms, the growth of trade and the movement of armies, and gives also to the receptive spirit a sense of active and reciprocal contact with the earth which nourishes us and which we inhabit. ”

“ The value of travel, to the eye at least, lies in its presentation of clear and permanent impressions, and these I think (though some would quarrel with me for saying it) are usually instantaneous. It is the first sharp vision of an unknown town, the first immediate vision of a range of hills, that remains for ever and is fruitful of joy within the mind, or, at least, that is one and perhaps the chief of the fruits of travel.
I remember once, for instance, waking from a dead sleep in a train (for I was very tired) and finding it to be evening. What woke me was the sudden stopping of the train. ”

“ But a reason had to be given for the journey, for in those days people did not travel about from place to place for the mere pleasure of seeing another town, as we do now. Few people thought of going for a change of air, nobody perhaps ever thought about going to the seaside for the summer. In short, people always had a special object in taking a journey. ”

“ When I began to read the numerous narratives of travels, which compose so interesting a part of modern literature, I regretted that travellers, the most enlightened in the insulated branches of natural history, were seldom possessed of sufficient variety of knowledge to avail themselves of every advantage arising from their position. ”

“ An attentive examination of the works of travellers of all ages and countries has at length created a contrary conviction in my mind. In a judicious personal narrative the traveller is but one interlocutor in a drama exhibiting innumerable characters and a perpetually changing scene. ”

“ Now, I need not insist that what is most important in foreign travel is not the novel sensations to which it gives rise,—the sense of a [28] different climate, the flavor of new dishes, the fragrance of strange flowers, the sound of unfamiliar music, even the sight of ancient buildings or famous pictures—pleasurable and profitable as all of these are; and, fortunately, most of them may be enjoyed here, directly or indirectly. The fundamental value of travel is in the realization that it gives of ways of feeling, thinking, and acting, other than our own ”

“ And here may follow a few more remarks of theirs, chosen as suggestive of the characteristics of sixteenth-century travel in so far as it differs from our own, not neglecting proverbs:—
A traveller has need of a falcon's eye, an ass's ears, a monkey's face, a merchant's words, a camel's back, a hog's mouth, a deer's feet. And [59] the traveller to Rome—the back of an ass, the belly of a hog, and a conscience as broad as the king's highway. ”

“ We shall follow the course of the sun, but diverge wherever the peculiarities of different countries prove attractive. As the author will conduct his readers only among scenes and over routes which he himself has travelled, it is hoped that he may be able to impart a portion of the enjoyment experienced, and the knowledge gained in many foreign lands and on many distant seas. ”

“ Ingram at the office of the Illustrated London News, he suddenly suggested my going out as their “special artist” with this expedition. The love of travel and the spirit of adventure are so strong in me, that without the slightest hesitation I eagerly caught at the idea ”

“ TRAVEL, in the younger sort, is a part of education, in the elder, a part of experience. He that travelleth into a country, before he hath some entrance into the language, goeth to school, and not to travel. That young men travel under some tutor, or grave servant, I allow well; so that he be such a one that hath the language, and hath been in the country before ”

“ That day's journey seems more like a dream than reality, for hills and valleys, woods and meadows, hamlets and villages, lakes and rivers, the puff of the engine, the rattle of the train, men, women, and children in serried ranks, are all mingled in confusion in the kaleidescope of memory, and nothing but a map or a Traveler's Guide-book can unravel the tangled skein of localities that was spun out in that rapid journey of fourteen hours. ”

“ Ah, yes, we say, travel is a good schoolmaster, and we broaden and deepen under its discipline. But there are many kinds of travelers; the mere globe trotter, hastening from one capital to another, seeing much, but perceiving little, and resembling the woman who was asked by a friend what most impressed her in one of Germany's tourist-infested cities. ”

“ In fact, every step of our journey increased our regret that we should be obliged to hurry through a country which it would have delighted us to view at leisure, each town that we passed through offering some inducement to linger on the road. ”

“ For the benefit of those who are privileged to travel in Europe, and the number increases yearly, a pilgrimage is suggested which may easily be made to correspond with plans laid out on the basis of historical, artistic, and scenic points of interest. ”

“ The traveller—foot-sore, feverish, and satiated with glacier and precipice,—lies back in the corner of the diligence, perceiving little more than that the road is winding and hilly, and the country through which it passes, cultivated and tame. ”

“ This modern experiment of putting us through the world—the world of literature, experience, and travel—at excursion rates is of doubtful expediency.
I cannot but think that the White Mountains are cheapened a little by the facilities of travel and the multiplication of excellent places of entertainment. If scenery were a sentient thing, it might feel indignant at being vulgarly stared at, overrun and trampled on, by a horde of tourists who chiefly value luxurious hotels and easy conveyance. ”

“ In that land of sunshine, with the cool breeze from the sea, the constant influx of European and American travelers, keeping one in touch with the world and with the simplicity of the surroundings, one can imagine a tranquilizing life and a happy coterie. ”

“ The chief delight of travel lies in the surprise of the unforeseen, and the discoveries we make for ourselves of interesting places and beauty-spots: being unprepared beforehand for such revelations, no ideals have been formed. So the unknown attracts and becomes oftentimes memorable. ”

“ It has, however, been found by experience that, in accounts of travel, the general reader loses much of the pleasure which has been viiiexperienced by the writer, through knowledge being assumed of the history of the places visited; a knowledge which the traveller himself has absorbed almost unconsciously. ”

“ Those who have been accustomed to no other mode of travelling than that which is enjoyed by the rich and luxurious in England, who have their elliptical springs, their air, live-hair, or metallic squabs, their minute-timed posters and Macadamized surfaces to guard them against the duly unpremeditated shock of a stone or of a moment's delay, can hardly appreciate the pleasure of a journey in which every twenty yards will offer some fresh difficulty to encounter. ”