Eccentric Travellers – John Keay
I think the fellow who wrote this book must be a bit eccentric himself! Once I adjusted to his writing style, though, I found the accounts quite entertaining.
This is a collection of biographies of seven world travellers: Captain Philip Thicknesse, Thomas Manning, James Holeman, Charles Waterton, Joseph Wolff, William Gifford Palgrave and Dr. G. W. Leitner; men who felt the urge to go where few, if any, of their race had gone before, despite the risks. Several were, at some time in their career, missionaries, others were naturalists, one was an outlaw of sorts, another was totally blind. All of them were, to say the least, quirky.
One of the things I found very interesting about the individuals discussed was how different they were from one another. Their reasons for travelling were diverse. The way each of them considered the environments they travelled through was sometimes surprising to me. It was fascinating to see through these somewhat extreme examples of travellers, just how different we can be from each other, how much our experiences are coloured by our perceptions and expectations, and how differently we are perceived by those we meet, even though we share something so significant in common: the compulsion to travel and explore the world around us.
Tags: 18th century, 19th century, history, travel