Best of
Travel

1909

The Heart of the Antarctic: The Farthest South Expedition 1907-1909


Ernest Shackleton - 1909
    Now, Signet presents the only mass market edition of this history-making expedition, told by the man who led the treacherous journey in 1907. 16 pages of photos.

High Albania: A Victorian Traveller's Balkan Odyssey


Mary Edith Durham - 1909
    She sailed to Montenegro and began a love affair with the Balkans that lasted the rest of her life. This is her passionate account of life in the formidable mountainous terrain of Northern Albania.

Three Years in Tibet


Ekai Kawaguchi - 1909
    K. Kuloy. Account of Kawaguchi s now legendary solo trip, beginning 1899, through a Tibet long hostile to all outside visitors.

Trans-Himalaya, Discoveries and Adventures in Tibet: Vol. 1


Sven Hedin - 1909
    On his third expedition, 1905-08, Hedin investigated the Central Persian desert basins, the western highlands of Tibet, and the Transhimalaya, which for some time afterward was called the Hedin Range. He visited the 9th Panchen Lama in the cloister city of Tashilhunpo in Shigatse, and was the first European to reach the Kailash region, the sacred Lake Manasarovar and the sacred Mount Kailash, the midpoint of the earth according to Buddhist and Hindu mythology. His most important accomplishment was the sources of the Indus and Brahmaputra Rivers. "Traversing the Chang-tang in Tibet through Srinagar and Leh he reached to Shigatse. Thence he went back to Lake Mana sarowar along the Tsangpo and descended the Indus, and then towards Leh and returned to Simla by the Sutlej route" (Kakushi) Hedin was responsible for putting Tibet on the map, literally. His surveys and mapping expeditions helped to discover for the world the physical geography of the region.

Henry James on Italy: Selections from Italian Hours


Henry James - 1909
    James's enthusiastic appreciation of the unparalleled aesthetic allure of Venice, the vitality of Rome, and the noisy, sensuous appeal of Naples is everywhere marked by pervasive regret for the disappearance of the past and by ambivalence concerning the transformation of nineteenth-century Europe. Henry James (1843-1916), born in New York City, was the son of noted religious philosopher Henry James, Sr., and brother of eminent psychologist and philosopher William James. He spent his early life in America and studied in Geneva, London and Paris during his adolescence to gain the worldly experience so prized by his father. He lived in Newport, went briefly to Harvard Law School, and in 1864 began to contribute both criticism and tales to magazines.

Trans-Himalaya: Discoveries and Adventures in Tibet: Vol. 2 (of 2)


Sven Hedin - 1909
    It is built over a spring which bubbles up in the centre of the single room, a square apartment with each side five paces long. The walls are very thick, and are in one solid mass, unbroken by windows. The doorway is very low, and the wooden door is shut and locked; but that is not enough, so a wall of large blocks and smaller stones has been built before the door, and even the smallest interstices between them have been carefully filled up with pebbles. Not an inch of the door can be seen. But beside the entrance is a tiny tunnel through which the hermit’s food can be pushed in. The amount of daylight which can penetrate through the long narrow loophole must be very small; and it does not shine in direct, for the front of the hut is shut in by a wall, forming a small court, which only the monk who brings the anchorite his daily ration may enter. A small chimney rises from the flat roof, for the hermit may make himself tea every sixth day, and for this purpose some sticks of firewood are pushed through the loophole twice in the month. Through the chimney, too, a feeble light may fall, and by means of these two vents the air is renewed in the cell.