The Art of Travel Or, Shifts and Contrivances Available in Wild Countries

Galton, Francis, 1822-1911Project Gutenberg · United StatesDec 2019

Rating 4.1
Word count
730K words
Chapters
73

Tags

English Originals Travel Nature ObservationAdventure JourneyCuriosityDaily ReflectionsLife WisdomStep-by-Step GuideIllustrated GuideField CasesPractical GuideTravel Guide

Summary

Project Gutenberg was the first provider of free electronic books, or eBooks. Michael Hart, founder of Project Gutenberg, invented eBooks in 1971 and his memory continues to inspire the creation of eBooks and related technologies today.The Art of Travel; Or, Shifts and Contrivances Available in Wild CountriesAuthor: Galton, Francis, 1822-1911,Language: English, Class: G: Geography, Anthropology, Recreation, Release Date: Jan 13, 2005

Editor's review

This is a practical nineteenth-century manual of travel in the wild, in which the author draws on experience to explain how, in wilderness and remote regions, to make do with whatever is at hand and improvise solutions to real problems such as packing, camping, fording, and obtaining water. Its strength lies in its strongly hands-on orientation: it does not rely on modern equipment but stresses observing one's surroundings and adapting available materials, and many of its ideas remain instructive today. The text is in English, with the unhurried tone and detail of old-style technical writing. It can be read as a source on the history of travel and wilderness skills, and consulted by outdoor enthusiasts, though its specific methods may not meet today's safety standards and should be treated with caution.

Who it's for

A good fit for

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Reading tips

  1. Read by topic—camping, fording rivers, obtaining water—rather than straight through.
  2. Compare with modern outdoor practice as you read, flagging outdated or dangerous content.
  3. Treat it as a historical source and note the technical conditions and daily life of the period.

About the publisher

Project Gutenberg United States · Founded in 1971

Project Gutenberg is a digital publishing project focused on public-domain ebooks. Its publishing direction centers on classic literary works whose copyright has expired, covering genres such as poetry, drama, fiction, and epic. Representative books include Lyrical Ballads by Wordsworth and Coleridge, Proust's Du côté de chez Swann, Shakespeare's Macbeth and The Complete Works of William Shakespeare, Homer's The Iliad, Dante's La Divina Comèdia: Purgatòri, Cervantes's The History of Don Quixote, Volume 2, and Grahame's The Wind in the Willows. Its author resources consist mainly of classic Western writers such as Wordsworth, Proust, Shakespeare, Homer, Dante, Cervantes, Grahame, and Tolstoy. Its publishing feature is the provision of freely accessible ebooks in EPUB and Kindle formats; it is not a traditional publisher, and publicly available information is limited.

Contents

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FAQ

Can the wilderness methods in this book still be followed today? Some ideas remain useful, but the author's era had limited technical and safety knowledge, and some practices may be unsafe by today's standards. Treat it as historical experience and inspiration; for actual practice, follow modern outdoor standards and professional guidance.
How difficult is the English? Is it a struggle to read? It is old-style technical writing, with long sentences and many technical and equipment terms, making it harder than ordinary essays. Readers with some English can use a dictionary and read selectively by topic rather than forcing a full read, focusing on grasping the methods.

This site is an index: you start “Search all sources” in your browser, and the entries it lists all point to third-party sites; please judge their availability yourself.

About the author

Galton, Francis, 1822-1911 Author

Francis Galton (1822-1911) was a British scholar whose interests spanned statistics, anthropology and the practice of travel. Three of his works are held here, and they differ markedly in subject. Finger Prints systematically discusses the forms and classification of fingerprints and is an early work on their use for identification. The Art of Travel Or, Shifts and Contrivances Available in Wild Countries addresses travelers in the field, gathering practical techniques and ingenious solutions for the difficulties of remote regions in plain, concrete prose. Inquiries into Human Faculty and Its Development explores human faculties and their development, involving observation and measurement of human physical and mental traits. Together the three works show his concern both with usable practical knowledge and with studying human differences through observation and quantification. Public information is limited, so biographical details and honors are not supplied here; readers may approach his writing and influence through the works named above.