In 1719, Jean-Francois-Benjamin Dumont de Montigny, son of a Paris lawyer, set sail for Louisiana with a commission as a lieutenant after a year in Quebec. During his peregrinations over the next eighteen years, Dumont came to challenge corrupt officials, found himself in jail, eked out a living as a colonial subsistence farmer, survived life-threatening storms and epidemics, encountered pirates, witnessed the 1719 battle for Pensacola, described the 1729 Natchez Uprising, and gave account of the 1739-1740 French expedition against the Chickasaw. Dumont's adventures, as recorded in his 1747 memoir conserved at the Newberry Library, underscore the complexity of the expanding French Atlantic world, offering a singular perspective on early colonialism in Louisiana. His life story also provides detailed descriptions and illustrations of the peoples and environment of the lower Mississippi Valley. This English translation of the unabridged memoir features a new introduction, maps, and a biographical dictionary to enhance the text. Dumont emerges here as an important colonial voice and brings to vivid life the French Atlantic.

Turkey, Egypt, and Syria: A Travelogue vividly captures the experiences of prominent Indian intellectual and scholar Shibli- Nu'ma-ni- (1857-1914) as he journeyed across the Ottoman Empire and Egypt in 1892. A professor of Arabic and Persian at the Mohammedan Anglo-Oriental (MAO) College at Aligarh, Nu'ma-ni- took a six-month leave from teaching to travel to the Ottoman Empire in search of rare printed works and manuscripts to use as sources for a series of biographies on major figures in Islamic history. Along the way, he collected information on schools, curricula, publishers, and newspapers, presenting a unique portrait of imperial culture at a transformative moment in the history of the Middle East. Nu'ma-ni- records sketches and anecdotes that offer rare glimpses of intellectual networks, religious festivals, visual and literary culture, and everyday life in the Ottoman Empire and Egypt. First published in 1894, the travelogue has since become a classic of Urdu travel writing and has been immensely influential in the intellectual and politicalhistory of South Asia. This translation, the first into English, includes contemporary reviews of the travelogue, letters written by the author during his travels, and serialized newspaper reports about the journey, and is deeply enriched for readers and students by the translator's copious multilingual glosses and annotations. Nu'ma-ni- 's chronicle offers unique insight into broader processes of historical change in this part of the world while also providing a rare glimpse of intellectual engagement and exchange across the porous borders of empire.

In the late 19th and early 20th centuries, travelling within North American borders or beyond to exotic locations was difficult at best and disastrous at worst. Mary Schaffer, born into a Pennsylvania-based Quaker family in 1861, not only conquered international travel but also excelled as an explorer, surveyor and photographer in the backcountry of Canada's Rocky Mountains and the isolated communities of Japan and Formosa (now Taiwan). Michale Lang's new book features more than 200 of Mary Schaffer's colourful, hand-painted lantern slides from the archives of the Whyte Musem of the Canadian Rockies. These unique works of art detail some of the indigenous people and breathtaking landscapes of the Rocky Mountains, along with tribal communities of Japan and Formosa. Schaffer's writing, Michale Lang's accompanying narrative and the book's overall design (inspired by the work of Barbara Hodgson, author and designer of "The Tattooed Map," "No Place for a Lady and Opium") opens a unique window on the Victorian obsession with international travel and discovery.

A hard-headed but often hilarious guide to the pleasures and pitfalls of travel by one of Britain's favourite writers.

Unexpectedly in 1958, an irreverent British journalist and Australian cartoonist duo were granted visas to visit Communist China at its most closed and inscrutable. Emerging from the writings of Kirwan Ward and the drawings of Paul Rigby is a picture of China at a key moment in its history--still feeding off the exhilaration of the creation of "People's China" in 1949 and full of optimism and blind idealism. A rich collection of insights and observations tinged with skepticism and good humor, this record offers a western perspective of China during Mao Tse-tung's leadership.

The Home of the Blizzard is a tale of discovery and adventure, of pioneering deeds, great courage, heart-stopping rescues and heroic endurance. This is Mawson's own account of his years spent in sub-zero temperatures and gale-force winds. At its heart is the epic journey of 1912-13, during which both his companions perished. Told in a laconic but gripping style, this is the classic account of the struggle for survival of the Australasian Antarctic Expedition - a journey which mapped more of Antarctica than any expedition before or since. The photographs included in this book were taken on the journey by Frank Hurley, later to achieve fame on Sir Ernest Shackleton's Endurance expedition. 'One of the greatest accounts of polar survival in history.' - Sir Ranulph Fiennes

In the 1920's, Papua New Guinea and the Solomon Islands were among the world's last wild places. Largely unmapped and inhabited by headhunters and cannibals, these jungle islands of the Coral Sea captured the popular imagination as examples of the unknown. Many adventurers went to these remote islands, the least likely of whom were two young American women, Caroline Mytinger and Margaret Warner who set out from San Francisco in 1926 armed with little more than art supplies and a ukelele, used by Margaret to entertain sitters while Caroline painted their portraits. Mytinger and Warner went chasing adventure in the name of science, something rarely done by women at the time, and they did it in the face of universal dissapproval and even terror on the part of their families, who didn't expect them to come back alive. Not only that, but they had virtually no money and no scientific support or backing. But live they did, and they brought back beautiful paintings and the fascinating stories contained in this fine book.

This is the first English translation of the famous risala, letters by the tenth-century traveler Ibn Fadlan, one of the great Medieval travelers in world history, akin to Ibn Batutta. Ibn Fadlan was an Arab missionary sent by the Caliph in Baghdad to the king of the Bulghars. He journeyed from Baghdad to Bukhara in Central Asia and then continued across the desert to the town of Bulghar, near present Kazan. He describes the tribes he meets on his way and gives an account of their customs. His is the earliest account of a meeting with the Vikings, called Rus, who had reached the Volga River from Sweden. His description of the Rus, or Rusiya as he calls them, has produced much discussion about their origins, shockingly free sexual morals standards, customs, treatment of slaves and women, burial traditions, and trading habits, all explained in detail by Ibn Fadlan. The story of his travels has fascinated scholars and even prompted Michael Chrichton to write the popular novel ""Eaters of the Dead,"" which was made into a film entitled ""The 13th Warrior.

Memories of Africa, pre-civil war New England, political turmoil in Russia, the end of slavery in Jamaica, and Caribbean pirates; an intrepid black woman experiences many turning points in world history. Nancy Prince paints a blunt picture of the struggle of free blacks to make a living in the North. When Boston failed to provide her with a livable wage, she and her husband found employment on a boat bound for Russia. A black household servant was a rare commodity in the land of the czars, and Prince was well compensated in St. Petersburg.

Beatrice Grimshaw was born in Ireland. She was an adventurer at heart since childhood and an independent soul who longed to travel to far away places. Until 1903 she had been a freelance journalist, a tour organiser and an emigration promoter but her dream was to go to the South Pacific islands. Embarking from San Francisco in 1904, she sailed first to Tahiti, followed by a four month voyage through the South Pacific and an additional two months on the island of Niue. During this trip, she visited Tonga, Samoa, Fiji, Rarotonga and some of the Cook islands. She returned to London and published "In the Strange South Seas" in 1907. In the book, Grimshaw not only recounts her adventures but she also describes the customs and lifestyles of the native populations as well as giving an exhaustive picture of the region's fauna and wildlife. The book also contain accounts of cannibalism, head-hunting, poisoning and tribal magic.

This book, first published in 1911, is one of the most important and best written travel books from old China. Edwin Dingle recounts his adventures as he travels up the Yangtze River from Shanghai and then by foot southwest across some of China's most wild and woolly territory to Burma. Along the way, Dingle absorbed an enormous amount of about life and society in southwest China, and describes what he sees in a readable and sensitive way.

This is a guidebook to the multifaceted career of the popular travel writer and historian. ""Traveling Genius"" surveys the half century of work by British writer Jan Morris, including more than fifty books and thousands of essays and reviews, from 1950s America via Oxford, Venice, Trieste, Sydney, and Hong Kong to her home in Wales. Internationally known as a travel writer, she has also distinguished herself across many other genres by writing history, autobiographies and biographies, and literary fiction and essays.Existing accounts of Morris' work are largely confined to reviews and magazine essays, and often concentrate on James Morris' sex change and transformation into Jan Morris. This is of course significant to the writing, and some critics detect a change of tone and style afterward, but a detailed analysis of how her writing works has not yet been undertaken. In ""Traveling Genius"", Gillian Fenwick fills that gap in the scholarship with the first study to explore the depths of Morris' complete body of work, utilizing close readings and archival research.Fenwick maintains that Morris' abilities as historian, biographer, novelist, journalist, essayist, and reviewer all come to bear in the travel writing that has defined and distinguished her international career. In her unique profiles of cities and nations, Morris has the ability to capture the spirit of a place and its culture without mere descriptions of tourist sites and activities, as illustrated in her best-selling works on Venice, Oxford, and Spain. Her historical volumes - and the groundbreaking Pax Britannica trilogy in particular - show her abilities to write for a popular audience while influencing the work and opinions of academics.

Travelling by dahabiah, a well-appointed sailing craft peculiar to the Nile, and armed with sketch-book and measuring tape, Amelia Edwards carefully recorded all she saw of the temples, graves, and monuments - even discovering a buried chapel of her own- and provided in A Thousand Miles Up The Nile the first general archaeological survey of Egypt's ruins. The book is full of historical footnotes and careful details. Amelia Edwards was responsible for founding the first chair in Egyptology (a science she helped create) at University College London, and was behind the appointment of Sir Flinders Petrie. She established herself as one of the authorities on the subject of Ancient Egypt and her book A Thousand Miles Up the Nile has remained one of the most inspiring travel books in the subject.

Annie, Lady Brassey was a very popular Victorian author. She travelled with her husband, Thomas and their four children aboard their yacht, the Sunbeam. Their eleven month sailing trip around the world in 1876-7 was inmortalized in Anna's book "A Voyage in the Sunbeam." The book ran through many English editions and was translated into many other languages. During her travels, lady Brassey collected many objects of the different cultures they visited. Her large collection of ethnographic and natural history objects were originally shown in a museum at her London house but they were moved eventually to Hastings Museum in 1919. Annie Brassey spent the last ten years of her life mainly at sea. She died suddenly of malaria on the way home from India and Australia in 1887 and was buried at sea at the age of 48.

Isabella Bird was one of the greatest travelers and travel writers of all time, and this is her last major book, a sympathetic look at inland China and beyond into Tibet at the end of the 19th century. In describing the journey, Isabella provides a rich mix of observations and describes two occasions when she is almost killed by anti-foreign mobs. It many ways, Isabella created the model for travel writing today, and this one of her greatest works.

Travelling by dahabiah, a well-appointed sailing craft peculiar to the Nile, and armed with sketch-book and measuring tape, Amelia Edwards carefully recorded all she saw of the temples, graves, and monuments - even discovering a buried chapel of her own- and provided in A Thousand Miles Up The Nile the first general archaeological survey of Egypt's ruins. The book is full of historical footnotes and careful details. Amelia Edwards was responsible for founding the first chair in Egyptology (a science she helped create) at University College London, and was behind the appointment of Sir Flinders Petrie. She established herself as one of the authorities on the subject of Ancient Egypt and her book A Thousand Miles Up the Nile has remained one of the most inspiring travel books in the subject.

Eliza Rumaha Scidmore was born October 14, 1856 in Madison, Wisconsin, United States of America and died November 3, 1928 in Geneva, Switzerland. She was a journalist and a traveller and spent long periods in in Alaska, Japan, China, Java and India. In this book about Java written in 1912, Scidmore, who clearly loved the subject is very enthusiastic about the country and the traditions that have made Java such a unique place. It still remains a little known country nowadays but by reading Eliza Scidmore, we are transported to the beauty of the tropical gardens, the volcanoes, the magnificent buddhist temple of Borobudur, the impact of the conquest by Islam, its unique culture and so many places that I bet you did not even know they existed.

At the height of his fame, Mark Twain, the great writer and humorist from Missouri, was facing financial ruin from one of his failed business ventures. Broke but much loved he embarked on a money-raising lecture tour around the equator, making a stop in Australia. The Wayward Tourist republishes Mark Twain's Australian travel writing in which he recounts impressions of Sydney ('God made the Harbor but Satan made Sydney') and his view of Australian history (' it reads like the most beautiful lies'). In his introduction, Don Watson brilliantly pays homage to America's 'funny man' who brought his swagger, love of language and wicked talent for observation to our shores.

Ever since Roman tourists scratched graffiti on the pyramids and temples of Egypt over two thousand years ago, people have travelled far and wide seeking the great wonders of antiquity. In From Stonehenge to Samarkand, noted archaeologist and popular writer Brian Fagan offers an engaging historical account of our enduring love of ancient architecture-the irresistible impulse to visit strange lands in search of lost cities and forgotten monuments. Here is a marvellous history of archaeological tourism, with generous excerpts from the writings of the tourists themselves. Readers will find Herodotus describing the construction of Babylon; Edward Gibbon receiving inspiration for his seminal work while wandering through the ruins of the Forum in Rome; Gustave Flaubert watching the sunrise from atop the Pyramid of Cheops. We visit Easter Island with Pierre Loti, Machu Picchu with Hiram Bingham, Central Africa with David Livingstone. Fagan describes the early antiquarians, consumed with a passionate and omnivorous curiosity, pondering the mysteries of Stonehenge, but he also considers some of the less reputable figures, such as the Earl of Elgin, who sold large parts of the Parthenon to the British Museum. Finally, he discusses the changing nature of archaeological tourism, from the early romantic wanderings of the solitary figure, communing with the departed spirits of Druids or Mayans, to the cruise-ship excursions of modern times, where masses of tourists are hustled through ruins, barely aware of their surroundings. From the Holy Land to the Silk Road, the Yucatan to Angkor Wat, Fagan follows in the footsteps of the great archaeological travellers to retrieve their first written impressions in a book that will delight anyone fascinated with the landmarks of ancient civilization.

Journal of a Tour of Discovery Across the Blue Mountains in New South Wales in the Year 1813 was first published in 1823. It is a romantic and descriptive narrative of the journey to find a path across the Blue Mountains and received a great reception both in England and in Australia.