The Tao of Travel

I sat down on a bank, such as a writer of Romance might have delighted to feign. I had indeed no trees to whisper over my head, but a clear rivulet streamed at my feet. The day was calm, the air soft, and all was rudeness, silence, and solitude. Before me, and on either side, were high hills, which by hindering the eye from ranging, forced the mind to find entertainment for itself. Whether I spent the hour well I know not; for here I first conceived the thought of this book.

—

A Journey to the Western Islands of Scotland

(1775)

C. M. DOUGHTY: "THE SEEING OF AN HUNGRY MAN"

We set but a name upon the ship, that our hands have built (with incessant labour) in a decenium, in what day she is launched forth to the great waters; and few words are needful in this place. The book is not milk for babes: it might be likened to a mirror. Wherein is set forth faithfully some parcel of the soil of Arabia smelling of

samn

[clarified butter] and camels ... And I rise now, from a long labour accomplished, with grateful mind and giving thanks to those learned men who have helped me, chiefly in the comparison—no light task—of my Arabic words, written from the lips of the people of Nejd, with the literal Arabic...

As for me who write, I pray that nothing be looked on in this book but the seeing of an hungry man and the telling of a most weary man; for the rest the sun made me an Arab, but never warped me to Orientalism.

—

Travels in Arabia Deserta

(1888)

DAVID LIVINGSTONE: "IT IS FAR EASIER TO TRAVEL THAN TO WRITE ABOUT IT"

As to those literary qualifications which are acquired by habits of writing, and which are so important to an author, my African life has not been favorable to the growth of such accomplishments but quite the reverse; it has made composition irksome and laborious. I think I would rather cross the African continent again than write another book. It is far easier to travel than to write about it.

—from the original Introduction to

Missionary Travels in South Africa

(1857)

PAUL DU CHAILLU: "IT IS MUCH EASIER TO HUNT GORILLAS THAN TO WRITE ABOUT THEM"

The long and tedious labour of preparing this book for the press leaves me with the conviction that it is much easier to hunt gorillas than to write about them—to explore new countries than to describe them. During the twenty months which I have passed in the process of writing out my journals since my return to the United States, I have often wished myself back in the African wilds. I can only think that the reader, when he closes the book, will not think this labour wasted.

—Preface,

Explorations and Adventures in Equatorial Africa

(1861); these lines were probably inspired by Livingstone (see above), whom he acknowledges in the text of his book

ANTHONY TROLLOPE ON HOW HE WROTE THE WEST INDIES AND THE SPANISH MAIN:"PREPARATION ... THERE WAS NONE"

Preparation, indeed, there was none. The descriptions and opinions came hot on the paper from their causes. I will not say that this is the best way of writing a book intended to give accurate information. But it is the best way of producing to the eye of the reader, and to his ear, that which the eye of the writer has seen and his ear heard.

—quoted in James Pope-Hennessy,

Anthony Trollope

(1971)

MARK TWAIN ON ROUGHING IT: "VARIEGATED VAGABONDIZING"

This book is merely a personal narrative, and not a pretentious history or a philosophical dissertation. It is a record of several years of variegated vagabondizing, and its object is rather to help the resting reader while away an idle hour than afflict him with metaphysics, or goad him with science. Still, there is information in the volume; information concerning an interesting episode in the history of the Far West, about which no books have been written by persons who were on the ground in person, and saw the happenings of the time with their own eyes. I allude to the rise, growth and culmination of the silver-mining fever in Nevada—a curious episode, in some respects; the only one, of its peculiar kind, that has occurred in the land; and the only one, indeed, that is likely to occur in it.