The Tao of Travel

Here is another instance of travelers' ignorance, from Mary Kingsley's Travels in West Africa (1897). She writes, "Watch again a gang of natives trying to get a log of timber down into the river from the bank ... No idea of a lever, or anything of that sort—and remember that, unless under white supervision, the African has never made an even fourteenth-rate piece of cloth or pottery, or a machine, tool, picture, sculpture, and that he has never even risen to the level of picture-writing."

Never mind the masterpieces of Benin bronzes, the magnificent carvings of the Chokwe people, whom she would have known from her travels in Angola. A little research would have revealed the Amharic script of Abyssinia, two thousand years of Nok sculpture, the immense variety of African pottery, or ancient examples of terracotta statuary. Yet she seems not to have taken any notice even in the places she claimed to know well: Gabon with its Punu and Fang masks and carvings, or the masterpieces of carving—Bamileke and others, and indeed elaborate pots—from Cameroon.

Yet I am fascinated by imaginary landscapes, what Dr. Johnson called "romantick absurdities and incredible fictions," that are retailed as the real thing, especially landscapes I have seen. I do not recognize the fictional Africas, and Kafka's America is one of the weirdest countries of all. As for the outrageous George Psalmanazar—he fooled almost every reader (except Jonathan Swift) in early-eighteenth-century England with his book about Formosa.

George Psalmanazar's Travels in Formosa

THE AMAZING THING about this impostor of travel was the completeness and credibility of his book. Drawing on Dutch accounts, and fantasizing, he created a whole Formosan landscape and culture and made up an entire language of gobbledygook that even years later was taken by some scholars to be an actual Asiatic tongue. The book, published in London in 1704, was a huge success.

George Psalmanazar (or Psalmanaazaar) also managed to conceal his real identity under this outlandish name (perhaps a version of the Assyrian king Shalmaneser in 2 Kings): his birth name and birthplace are unknown. He was probably French, and he may have been born around 1689. For a while he claimed to be an Irish pilgrim. He also at various times said he was Japanese or Formosan. He claimed to worship the sun and the moon, and he slept sitting upright in a chair ("Formosan-style" he said), but he was more than the lovable eccentric who was later befriended by Dr. Johnson. "A great lover of penitents," Jeffrey Meyers writes in his biography Samuel Johnson: The Struggle, "Johnson reverenced Psalmanazar, who'd confessed his sins, reformed his character and become pious, endured prolonged hardship and—though an opium addict—died an exemplary Christian." But in his travel book, Psalmanazar played upon the anti-Jesuit animus current in the early eighteenth century; disparagements of Catholic missionaries are frequent in his book, something that would have found favor with the predominantly Catholic-hating English.

"The prevailing Reason for this my Undertaking was," he writes, "because the Jesuits I had found had imposed so many Stories, and such Gross Fallacies upon the Public, that they might the better excuse themselves from those base Actions, which brought upon them that fierce Persecution in Japan." The Japanese persecution of Catholics in the 1630s was a historical fact that was given a fictional retelling in Shusako Endo's 1966 masterpiece, Silence.

Psalmanazar's book is in two parts, the first, "An Historical and Geographical Description of Formosa, Giving an account of the Religion, Customs, & of the Inhabitants, Together with a Relation of what happen'd to the Author in his Travels; particularly his Conferences with the Jesuits, and others, in several Parts of Europe. Also the History and Reasons of his Conversion to Christianity, with his Objections against it (in defence of Paganism) and their Answers." The second part relates his travels: "An Account of the Travels of Mr. George Psalmanaazaar, a Native of the Isle Formosa, thro' several parts of Europe; with the reasons of his Conversion to the Christian Religion."

Discourses on religion aside, the book is highly readable, both for its narrative of abduction and its delineation of a colorful culture. George is taken, under protest, by Jesuits from his native land. He travels to the Philippines, then to Goa, then Gibraltar, where "very much indisposed by the change of Climates, Air and Diet," he needs to recuperate. Then on to Toulon, Marseille, and into Catholic Avignon and Lutheran Bonn and Calvinist Holland, where he becomes embroiled in theological arguments. He is ultimately converted to Christianity, becoming "a most faithful Member of the Church of England."