Best of
Travel

1954

The Bafut Beagles


Gerald Durrell - 1954
    Meet a frog with a coat of hair (which turns out not to be hair at all), full grown monkeys that fit inside a teacup, mice with wings, and many more of the species endemic to the Cameroons, not to mention the local ruler, the Fon of Bafut.

Three Singles to Adventure


Gerald Durrell - 1954
    three singles to adventure takes the reader to south America, where he meets the sakiwinki and the sloth clad in bright green fur, where he can hear the horrifying sound of piranha fish on the rampage, or learn how to lasso a galloping anteater.

Starlight and Storm


Gaston Rébuffat - 1954
    . . who has discovered through the medium of mountains the true perspective of living." --Sir John Hunt, author of The Conquest of Everest Known for his lyrical writing and his ability to convey not only the dangers of mountaineering but the pure exaltation of the climb, Gaston Rebuffat is among the most well-known and revered Alpinists of all time. He rose to international prominence in 1950 as one of the four principal stalwarts in the first ascent of Annapurna, the highest mountain climbed at that time. Yet his finest feat as a mountaineer was to be the first man to climb all six of the legendary great north faces of the Alps--the Grandes Jorasses, the Piz Badile, the Dru, the Matterhorn, the Cima Grande di Lava-redo, and the Eiger.With this elegant book, first published in 1954, Gaston Rebuffat transformed mountain writing. His insistence on seeing a climb as an act of harmonious communion with the mountain, not a battle waged against it, seemed radical at the time, though Rebuffat's aesthetic has since won the day. Through storms, avalanches, rock fall, unplanned bivouacs, and even the deaths of companions, we follow the Chamonix guide to the altar of his communion, on dark, icy walls that struck terror into the hearts of Europe's finest mountaineers. Nor are these deft narratives mere recitations of dangers faced and obstacles overcome, for Rebuffat pays as keen attention to the joys of comradeship won on these faces as he does to the climbs themselves. In our own day of corporate sponsorships, online expeditions, and eco-vacations, the purity of Rebuffat's vision of the Alps as (in the epithet of the title of another of his books) an "enchanted garden" shines forth in prose as fresh and stylish as any ever lavished on mountaineering.

Amazon Head-hunters


Lewis Cotlow - 1954
    But his main goal was the Jivaro head-hunters, and in this thrilling account of his journeys and adventures, he describes their costumes, their homes, their food, jokes, dances, ceremonials and their history. He treated these primitive people as fellow human beings, won their respect, and as a result was able to see and photograph rituals probably never recorded before.

An English Year


Nan Fairbrother - 1954
    lished in the UK as The Children in the House is book is about the author's experiences during World War II, evacuating with her two sons from London to a house in the Buckinghamshire countryside while her husband was in the RAF.

Incidents of Travel and Adventure in the Far West with Colonel Frémont's Last Expedition


Solomon Nunes Carvalho - 1954
    A Baltimore artist, inventor, and daguerreotypist, Carvalho was given the job of creating a photographic record of the lands and peoples along the way. Frémont’s party left the Missouri on September 14, 1853, traveled up the Kansas River, overland to the Arkansas, upriver past Bent’s Fort to the Huerfano, and traversed the Sandhill Pass into the Rocky Mountains. Beset by heavy snows and intense cold, they were reduced to eating their horses and mules and the occasional beaver or porcupine while making their way in midwinter across the Grand, Green, and Sevier Rivers. Suffering from frostbite, scurvy, and dysentery, Carvalho left the expedition in Utah; spent four months among the Mormons in Salt Lake City, where he observed with keen interest their system of spiritual wives; and reached California in 1854.Carvalho became the first Jewish writer to publish accounts of the Great American West and was also one of the first people to photograph the American West. Although only one of his plates is known to survive, others became the models for wood and steel engravings that broadcast the image of the West throughout the world.This Bison Books edition restores the discourses on Mormon doctrine omitted from previous twentieth-century editions.

Who Wanders Alone


Peter Pinney - 1954
    Why Not? It was just as likely to begin at Alice Springs and end at Toledo or Saskatchewan. For this most eclectic of travellers pleases himself.What he lacks in money, baggage and correct visas he makes up for in inventiveness and enterprise. His capacity for 'adapting' his credentials is seemingly boundless, and he presents himself now as a student of folk-lore, ow as an ornithologist or pilgrim.