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The Art of Travel: Or, Shifts and Contrivances Available in Wild Countries (Cambridge Library Collection - British and Irish History, General) - Softcover
Francis Galton (1822–1911), a grandson of Erasmus Darwin and later a pioneer of biostatistics, published this book in 1855, drawing on his experiences during an extensive journey around Africa. It is intended as a 'how-to' guide, offering, as the subtitle says, 'shifts and contrivances available in wild countries'. The book is organised by topic, beginning with the essentials for all travellers: water, fire, shelter, food and cookery. Later chapters consider 'matters of discipline', including 'securing prisoners', and 'carpentry and smith's work', more suitable for a military or scientific expedition. The chapter on water explains how to find it, collect it, store it, purify it and transport it, using examples from Africa, India and Mongolia. The remainder of the work is equally wide-ranging and practical, giving an insight into the needs and expectations of British travellers as they ranged ever more widely over the world.
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Review:
Darwin's first cousin, Francis Galton, is most famous today as the man who developed eugenics. But he was also a meteorologist, a pioneer in the science of using fingerprints for personal identification, and widely travelled. As a young man he explored the Near East and South West Africa, and these experiences inspired him to write this remarkable guide to the art of travelling, which ran through eight editions in his lifetime.
Book Description:
The book still makes for fascinating reading, as much for the extraordinary historical detail which it provides as for its advice. Some tips are still first-rate--on bivouacking and caring for the backs of pack-animals for instance--and give pointers which are very difficult to find today: how to build pack-saddles or stone ovens, the construction of calabash boats, and so on. Other tips will be of less use to the modern traveller, but, nevertheless, the sections on the "management of savages" and "taking prisoners" give a wonderful perspective on the Victorian world view.
Today, The Art of Travel comes across as a highly unusual book. It is written in the measured, graceful prose of the Victorian age, which gives an elegant reminder of how flabby some contemporary writing has become. Whether he is writing about flocks of sheep sheltering in Hyde Park or making complicated computations of the optimum weights for people and animals to carry, Galton is an engaging companion, and, even 130 years on, often a useful one. --Toby Green
Francis Galton, later a pioneer of biostatistics, published this book in 1855, drawing on his experiences during an extensive journey around Africa. The work is wide-ranging and practical, giving an insight into the needs and expectations of British travellers as they ranged ever more widely over the world.
"About this title" may belong to another edition of this title.
- PublisherCambridge University Press
- Publication date2019
- ISBN 10 1108079237
- ISBN 13 9781108079235
- BindingPaperback
- Number of pages210
- Rating
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