The "Voyage and Travaille of Sir John Mandeville" is a book very precious to the English language, if not to the history of facts. It was intended as a road-book to the Holy Land, and was produced as early as 1356. It is precious not only because of the marvelous tales skillfully woven in as reports of the belief of various cities—stories which have been inspirations to hundreds of romancers—but because of the fact that it was, so far as we know, the first piece of English prose of any considerable extent to depart from the beaten track of medieval theology and philosophy, and the first piece of original prose to reveal any personality, to have any style, any flavor of the author. Altho because of its stooping to the delight that men of that day took in marvels it places itself really in the class of imaginary voyages, it yet belongs with good travel books in this one essential—vivacity and personal charm.
Marco Polo, the Venetian traveler of the thirteenth and fourteenth centuries, because of his irresponsibility in padding his account with marvelous tales, placed himself with Mandeville and the wonder books; but the result of his "Travels" was scientific in the effect his evidence that he had really been to the far East had upon Columbus and the earlier navigators.
An interesting bit of Anglo-Saxon actual travel account is the story of Ohthere and Wulfstan inserted by King Alfred into his translation of the "History of Orosius," and told as the king took it down from the lips of these sea-rovers themselves sometime during the ninth century.
Sturdy old Sam Johnson by his "Journey to the Western Isles" added a substantial volume to the very short eight-or-ten-inch shelf of great travel book.
In many ways Bayard Taylor was the ideal traveler, putting himself into sympathy with the people whom he went among, wearing their dress, eating their food, speaking their language. But he failed to produce great literature, for some reason or other—perhaps because he wrote for the newspapers. His "Views Afoot, or Europe seen with Knapsack and Staff" and other "copy" of the sort are interesting reading, however. Darwin's record of the Voyage of the Beagle is invaluable to science.
Richard Henry Dana's "Two Years Before the Mast" is an excellent boys' book, and has a fine feeling of adventure about it. But we may not mention the work of any more travel writers, Stevenson, James, Curtis, Stanley, Roosevelt, or others in other languages.
Fielding's gentle warning
Many of our travel books were written as letters and journals; some, as notes or strict diaries. You might put your sketch into the form of a letter to a friend. The chief thing you need to remember in relating any journey, however long or short, is Fielding's gentle warning to know what to omit: "To make a traveler an agreeable companion to a man of sense, it is necessary, not only that he should have seen much, but that he should have overlooked much of what he hath seen.... A motto for the narrator[Some voyage-writers] waste their time and paper with recording things and facts of so common a kind that they challenge no other right of being remembered than as they had the honor of having happened to the author, to whom nothing seems trivial that in any manner happens to himself. Of such consequence do his own actions appear to one of his kind that he would probably think himself guilty of infidelity should he omit the minutest thing in the detail of his journal. That the fact is true, is sufficient to give it a place there without any consideration whether it is capable of pleasing or surprising, of diverting or informing the reader." By implication Fielding gives the travel book its motto: to please and surprise, divert and inform.
"On the Way to Talavera"
The next day's journey brought me to a considerable town, the name of which I have forgotten. It is the first in New Castile, in this direction. I passed the night as usual in the manger of the stable, close beside the Caballeria; for, as I traveled upon a donkey, I deemed it incumbent upon me to be satisfied with a couch in keeping with my manner of journeying, being averse, by any squeamish and over delicate airs, to generate a suspicion amongst the people with whom I mingled that I am aught higher than what my equipage and outward appearance might lead them to believe. Rising before daylight, I again proceeded on my way, hoping ere night to be able to reach Talavera, which I was informed was ten leagues distant. The way lay entirely over an unbroken level, for the most part covered with olive trees. On the left, however, at the distance of a few leagues, rose the mighty mountains which I have already mentioned. They run eastward in a seemingly interminable range, parallel with the route which I was pursuing; their tops and sides were covered with dazzling snow, and the blasts which came sweeping from them across the wide and melancholy plains were of bitter keenness.