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3.4 NARRATIVES OF TRAVELLERS CONSIDERED

It might, I ponder, be justly perceived, that few books dissatisfy their readers more
than the histories of travellers. One slice of mankind is indeed interested to absorb the
sentimentalities, demeanours, and condition of the rest; and every mind that has
freedom or authority to outspread its views, must be keen of knowing in what fraction
Providence has disseminated the blessings of nature, or the benefits of art, among the
several nations of the earth.

This universal longing simply obtains readers to every book from which it can expect
gratification. The explorer upon unknown shores, and the describer of aloof areas, is
always welcomed as a man who has worked hard for the preference of others, and who
is able to enlarge our knowledge and repair our sentiments; but when the volume is
unlocked, nothing is found but such common accounts as leave no distinct idea behind
them, or such minute inventories as few can read with either profit or delight.

Every writer of travels should study, that, like all other authors, he undertakes either
to train or please, or to mingle choice with tutoring. He that teaches must offer to the
mind something to be copied, or something to be dodged; he that pleases must offer
new images to his reader, and empower him to form a implicit comparison of his own
state with that of others.

The greater part of travellers tell nothing, because their method of travelling supplies
them with nothing to be told. He that enters a town at night, and analyses it in the
morning, and then rushes away to another place, and guesses at the manners of the
occupants by the entertainment which his inn paid for him, may please himself for a
time with a rapid change of scenes, and a confused commemoration of palaces and
churches; he may oblige his eye with a variety of landscapes, and regale his appetite
with a succession of years; but let him be satisfied to please himself without labouring
to disturb others.

Why should he record expeditions by which nothing could be learned, or wish to make
a show of knowledge, which, without some power of insight unknown to other
humans, he never could attain?

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Of those who crowd the world with their schedules, some have no other purpose than
to describe the face of the country; those who sit idle at home, and are inquisitive to
know what is done or ached in distant countries, may be educated by one of these
wanderers, that on a certain day he set out early with the convoy, and in the first hour’s
march saw, towards the south, a hill covered with trees, then passed over a stream,
which ran northward with a hasty course, but which is perhaps dry in the summer
months; that an hour after he saw something to the right which looked at a distance
like a castle with towers, but which he revealed afterwards to be a rugged rock; that
he then entered a valley, in which he saw several trees tall and blossoming, watered
by a rivulet not marked in the maps, of which he was not able to learn the name; that
the road afterward grew stony, and the country uneven, where he observed among the
hills many caverns worn by streams, and was told that the road was crossable only part
of the year; that going on they found the remains of a building, once, perhaps, a castle
to secure the pass, or to confine the robbers, of which the present inhabitants can give
no other account than that it is haunted by fairies; that they went to feast at the foot of
a rock, and travelled the rest of the day along the banks of a river, from which the road
turned aside towards evening, and brought them within sight of a village, which was
once a substantial town, but which afforded them neither good supplies nor spacious
lodging.

Thus he conducts his reader through wet and dry, over rough and smooth, without
incidents, without reflection; and, if he gains his company for another day, will dismiss
him again at night, equally drained with a like sequence of rocks and streams,
mountains and relics.

This is the common style of those sons of initiative, who visit vicious countries, and
range through loneliness and anguish; who pass a desert, and tell that it is grimy; who
cross a valley, and find that it is green. There are others of more gentle susceptibility,
that visit only the lands of sophistication and smoothness; that stroll through Italian
palaces, and please the gentle reader with strings of pictures; that hear masses in
splendid churches, and recount the number of the pillars or variegations of the
roadway. And there are yet others, who, in contempt of trifles, copy engravings
graceful and rude, antique and current; and transliterate into their book the walls of
every association, revered or domestic. He that reads these books must consider his
labour as its own incentive; for he will find nothing on which attention can fix, or
which memory can preserve.

He that would travel for the entertainment of others, should remember that the great
object of remark is human life. Every nation has something unusual in its productions,
its works of genius, its medicines, its agriculture, its customs and its policy. He only
is a useful traveller, who brings home something by which his country may be
promoted; who acquires some supply of want, or some justification of evil, which may
enable his readers to compare their condition with that of others, to improve it
whenever it is worse, and whenever it is better to enjoy it.

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