Travelogues in Space and Time a Book of Travellers' Tales Edited by Eric Newby

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The publisher had no way of knowing that thanks to concerns about terrorism, the summer of '86 would be the period when hordes of Americans decided to stay home. But the timing of the appearance of A Book of Travellers' Tales could hardly be happier. Those who think that days of bumper-to-bumper traffic are too high a price to pay for a glimpse of Old Faithful or Mickey Mouse may welcome this alternative: they can curl up instead with reports by more than 300 wanderers, spanning some 2,400 years and covering virtually the entire earth. Reading about exotic places is usually the next best thing to seeing them in person. Sometimes, when the natives are unfriendly or the food inedible, a secondhand experience is more enjoyable than the original.

Author Eric Newby, who has written travel books himself and served as travel editor of the Observer in London, divides his anthology into broad geographical sections (Africa, Europe, North America, etc.) and then offers excerpts about each area in chronological order. This method of organization creates travelogues in time as well as space. A Greek navigator who landed on the British Isles around 310 B.C. formed a favorable impression of the residents: "They are simple in their habits, and far removed from the cunning and knavishness of modern man." By the early 18th century, a Swiss visitor to England noted a decline in hospitality: "When the people see a well-dressed person in the streets, especially if he is wearing a braided coat, a plume in his hat, or his hair tied in a bow, he will, without doubt, be called 'French dog' 20 times perhaps before he reaches his destination."

Early travelers tended to emphasize wonders at the expense of precision, secure in the belief that no one would make the same arduous journey simply to contradict them. A colleague of Magellan's reported a strange sight in Patagonia: "One day, without anyone expecting it, we saw a giant, who was on the shore of the sea, quite naked, and was dancing and leaping, and singing, and whilst singing he put the sand and dust on his head . . . He was so tall that the tallest of us only came up to his waist." After the dawn of the Enlightenment and the scientific method, eyewitness accounts of oddities arrived buttressed by facts. In Africa, a 19th century, English explorer met the sister-in-law of a local chief and noted, "She was another of those wonders of obesity, unable to stand excepting on all fours." He then cajoled the large lady into giving him permission to measure her and dutifully reported the results: "Round arm, 1 ft. 11 in.; chest, 4 ft. 4 in.; thigh, 2 ft. 7 in.; calf, 1 ft. 8 in.; height, 5 ft. 8 in."