Note
The travel-sketches that go to the making of this little book have appeared, in part only, in certain literary magazines, here and in America; but the greater part of the work is now printed for the first time.
Perhaps the author should anticipate a criticism that might arise from the sequence of the first two papers. Had he gone to work on a set plan, he would naturally have undertaken his pilgrimage along the route of An Inland Voyage before visiting the scenes of Travels with a Donkey, as the one book preceded the other in order of publication, An Inland Voyage, which appeared originally in 1878, being properly Stevenson's first book. Travels with a Donkey was published in 1879. But he has preferred to give precedence to "Through the Cevennes," as it was the first of his Stevenson travel-sketches to be written. Moreover, these little journeys were as much, indeed more affairs of personal pleasure than of copy-hunting, and when the author went forth on them he had no intention of making a book about his experiences—at least, not one deriving its chief interest from association with the memory of R. L. S. He has been counselled, however, to bring together these chapters and their accompanying photographs in this form, on the plea that the interest in Stevenson's French travels is still so considerable that any straightforward account of later journeys over the same ground cannot fail to have some attraction for the admirers of that great master of English prose.
The book is but a very little sheaf from the occasional writings of its author on his wayfarings in old France, where in the last ten years he has travelled many thousands of miles by road and rail between Maubeuge and Marseilles, from Belfort to Bordeaux, and always with undiminished interest among a people who are eminently lovable and amid scenes of infinite variety and charm.
"In a little place called Le Monastier, in a pleasant Highland valley about fifteen miles from Le Puy, I spent a month of fine days."—R. L. S.
The Public Well