The Tao of Travel

The old man nodded. The warrior to the right and behind me lowered his spear and pricked me gently between the shoulder-blades.

"It's a bargain!" I said.

—Redmond O'Hanlon,

No Mercy

(1997)

Fanny Trollope on American Hypocrisy

Had I, during my residence in the United States, observed any single feature in their national character that could justify their eternal boasts of liberality and the love of freedom, I might have respected them, however much my taste might have been offended by what was peculiar in their manners or customs. But it is impossible for any mind of common honesty not to be revolted by the contradictions in their principles and practice ... You will see them with one hand hoisting the cap of liberty, and with the other flogging their slaves. You will see them one hour lecturing their mob on the indefeasible rights of man, and the next driving from their homes the children of the soil, whom they have bound to protect by the most solemn treaties.

 —

The Domestic Manners of Americans

(1832)

Elias Canetti: Unfathomable Prices in Marrakesh

In the souks, however, the price that is named first is an unfathomable riddle. No one knows in advance what it will be, not even the merchant, because in any case there are many prices. Each one relates to a different situation, a different customer, a different time of day, a different day of the week. There are prices for single objects and prices for two or more together. There are prices for foreigners visiting the city for a day and prices for foreigners who have been here for three weeks. There are prices for the poor and prices for the rich, those for the poor of course being the highest. One is tempted to think that there are more kinds of prices than there are kinds of people in the world.

—

The Voices of Marrakesh,

translated by J. A. Underwood (1978)

Edward Lear Being Pestered in Albania

No sooner had I settled to draw ... than forth came the populace of Elbassan; one by one and two by two to a mighty host they grew, and there were soon from eighty to a hundred spectators collected, with earnest curiosity in every look; and when I had sketched such of the principal buildings as they could recognize a universal shout of "Shaitan!" [Satan] burst from the crowd; and strange to relate, the greater part of the mob put their fingers into their mouths and whistled furiously, after the manner of butcher boys in England. Whether this was a sort of spell against my magic I do not know ... One of those tiresome Dervishes—in whom, with their green turbans, Elbassan is rich—soon came up, and yelled, "Shaitan scroo!—Shaitan!" [The Devil draws! The Devil!] in my ears with all his force; seizing my book also, with an awful frown shutting it, and pointing to the sky, as intimating that Heaven would not allow such impiety.

—

Journal of a Landscape Painter in Albania

(1851)

André Gide: Thoroughly Bored in Bosoum

The absence of individuality, of individualization—the impossibility of differentiating—which depressed me so much at the beginning of my journey, is what I suffer from too much of the landscape. (I experienced this sensation as early as Matadi on seeing the population of children all alike, all equally agreeable, etc.... and again on seeing the huts of the first villages, all alike, all containing droves of human cattle with the same looks, tastes, customs, possibilities, etc....) Bosoum is a place that looks over a wide stretch of country, and as I stand here on a kind of terrace, made of red ochre-colored laterite, gazing on the marvelous quality of the light and admiring the vast undulations of the ground, I ask myself what there is to attract me to any one point rather than to any other. Everything is uniform; there can be no possible predilection for any particular site. I stayed the whole day yesterday without the least desire to stir. From one end of the horizon to the other, wherever my eye settles, there is not a single point to which I wish to go.

 —

Travels in the Congo

(1929)

Rimbaud Having a Bad Day in Harar, Abyssinia

I still get very bored. In fact, I've never known anyone who gets as bored as I do. It's a wretched life anyway, don't you think—no family, no intellectual activity, lost among negroes who try to exploit you and make it impossible to settle business quickly? Forced to speak their gibberish, to eat their filthy food and suffer a thousand aggravations caused by their idleness, treachery and stupidity!

And there's something even sadder than that—it's the fear of gradually turning into an idiot oneself, stranded as one is, far from intelligent company.

—letter to his mother, 1886, in Geoffrey Wall,

Rimbaud