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Recently Mark Twain has shown in his Mississippi sketches, in "Tom Sawyer," and in "Hucklebury Finn," that he can paint a landscape, that he can describe life, that he can tell a story as well as the very best, and all without losing the gift of laughter. His travel-books are his least excellent; he is happiest at home, in the country of his own Blue Jay.
What is it which makes men in Alpine travel-books write as men never write elsewhere? What is the origin of a style unique in literature, which misses both the sublime and the ridiculous, and constantly hops from tall-talk to a mirth feeble and inane? Why is it that the senior tutor, who is so hard on a bit of bad Latin, plunges at the sight of an Alp into English inconceivable, hideous?
Once he had pictured sitting about reading travel-books as a perfect occupation. But it concealed no exciting little surprises when he could be a Sunday loafer on any plain Monday. Furthermore, Goaty never made his bed till noon, and the gray-and-brown-patched coverlet seemed to trail all about the disordered room.
Vastly diverting as the eighteenth-century travel-books sometimes are, there is nothing in them that warms the heart like the travels of poor Tom Coryat, that infatuated tourist, chief of the tribe of Gad, whom nothing daunted in his determination to see the world.
'Happen he've got hold of a fresh travel-book. Then Ned's thoughts easily slipped off to the subject of other 'travel-books' devoured by Alick and retailed to himself. He pictured vividly, as the 'Roarer' swished through the dark waters, a far different scene to that of the quiet Northbourne bay.
SUNDAY TIMES. "Brilliantly and entertainingly written, and liberally illustrated by an acknowledged master of the art of black and white." SCOTSMAN. "A beautiful and fascinating book.... Pen and pencil sketches alike have grace, nerve, and humour, and are alive with human interest and observation." GLASGOW HERALD. "One of the most delightful travel-books of recent times.... Mrs.
Scientific knowledge, keen observation, or intuitive power of discrimination go far. To enlist our curiosity or enthusiasm or to excite our wonder are even stronger recommendations. Charm of personal manner, power of will, anthropological interest, self-effacement in view of some great objects all these qualities have made travel-books live.
Returning home, he married a wife with some money, and spent the remainder of a long life in his native county of Norfolk, producing, besides the books just named, Wild Wales , and dying in 1881. There is, in fact, not very much difference between Borrow's novels and his travel-books.
This passage shows what, indeed, is sufficiently evident in every page of Miss Bird's travel-books that she possesses, as every traveller ought to possess, the artist's temperament, and that if she cannot transfer the scenes she loves to the canvas, she knows how to reproduce them in words that have the glow of light and life.
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