Through Five Republics on Horseback, Being an Account of Many Wanderings in

Ray, George Whitfield, 1868-Project Gutenberg · United StatesDec 2019

Rating 3.4
Word count
466K words
Chapters
47

Tags

English Originals Travel Human GeographyLatin America JourneyFolk ObservationsNature ObservationHorseback RidingAdventure JourneyTravel NarrativeLocal ObservationExotic CultureCross-Cultural View

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.Through Five Republics on Horseback, Being an Account of Many Wanderings inAuthor: Ray, George Whitfield, 1868-,Language: English, Class: F2201: Latin America local history: South America. General, Release Date: Feb 1, 2005

Editor's review

This is a travel account of a horseback journey through five republics of Central and South America, in which the author records the landscapes, towns, and peoples encountered along the way with an eyewitness's eye, in plain prose marked by its era. As a public-domain ebook, its value lies not in literary polish but in the sample it offers of Latin American society a century ago: modes of travel, transport conditions, local customs, and the outsider's gaze all emerge naturally from the text. For readers used to modern travel writing, the book moves slowly and its information density is uneven, which is precisely why it suits reading as historical source material; with a map and historical background at hand, one can read meanings beyond the travelogue. Best read slowly in sections in a quiet setting, or dipped into as supplementary material for research on Latin American history and travel writing.

Who it's for

A good fit for

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Reading tips

  1. Look up the locations of the five republics first, then read chapter by chapter accordingly to reduce confusion over place names.
  2. Compare the transport and town conditions described in the book with a present-day map to gain a more direct sense of how times have changed.
  3. There is no need to read it straight through; pick chapters by country according to interest and browse them as historical fragments.

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

  1. 1
  2. 2
  3. 3
  4. 4
  5. 5
  6. 6
  7. 7
  8. 8
  9. 9
  10. 10
  11. 11
  12. 12
  13. 13
  14. 14
  15. 15
  16. 16
  17. 17
  18. 18
  19. 19
  20. 20
  21. 21
  22. 22
  23. 23
  24. 24
  25. 25
  26. 26
  27. 27
  28. 28
  29. 29
  30. 30
  31. 31
  32. 32
  33. 33
  34. 34
  35. 35
  36. 36
  37. 37
  38. 38
  39. 39
  40. 40
  41. 41
  42. 42
  43. 43
  44. 44
  45. 45
  46. 46
  47. 47

FAQ

Is this book a novel or a factual travelogue? It is an account of the author's horseback travels through five republics of Central and South America, belonging to factual travel writing rather than fiction. The book centers on observations along the way and personal experience, with a distinctly period perspective.
Can I read this book if my English is not good? This is a public-domain English book. The language is generally plain, but it contains many place names and old-fashioned expressions, so it demands a certain level of English reading ability. If your English is basic, read with a dictionary or alongside reference materials.
As an ebook, what are the characteristics of this edition? The book is published by Project Gutenberg as a free public-domain ebook. The text consists mainly of the original English content and usually includes no modern annotations or maps. Prepare your own maps and background materials to aid comprehension while reading.

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About the author

Ray, George Whitfield, 1868- Author · 1868

George Whitfield Ray (born 1868) was an English-language travel writer active in the late nineteenth and early twentieth centuries. Public information about his life is limited, and neither his exact dates nor his nationality are clearly recorded. Only one of his works is held in this collection: Through Five Republics on Horseback, Being an Account of Many Wanderings in. Judging from its title and genre, the book is a travelogue structured around journeys on horseback, recounting the author's wanderings through several South American republics with a strong firsthand flavor and the marks of its era. Such works typically combine geographical observation, descriptions of local customs, and personal adventure, written in a plain style that emphasizes landscapes and sketches of people encountered along the way. Though the author is not widely known, the book can still serve as reference material for understanding travel writing and regional accounts of the period.