High Adventure

Past and present. You can't make this stuff up.
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Re: High Adventure

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A.H. Savage Landor, Across Unknown South America (1913)

Vol. 1: http://archive.org/details/acrossunknownsou00land
Vol. 2: http://archive.org/details/acrossunknownsou02land
South America is, to my mind, the "Coming Continent" —- the continent of the future. Everybody knows the wealth of the Argentine, Peru, Chile, and Bolivia; but the interior of Brazil, the largest and richest country of all, not unlike forbidden Tibet, was perhaps better known a century or two ago than now. Few people realize that Brazil is larger than the United States of North America, Germany, Portugal, and a few other countries taken together. The interior is practically a terra incognita, although the ancient Jesuits and, at a later date, escaped slaves and native rubber collectors have perhaps found their way inland to a considerable distance.

When I started on the trans-continental journey I did not take Europeans with me. It is not easy to find men who can stand the strain of so long a journey. I was also not surprised, although I was disappointed, not to be able to obtain suitable officers in Brazil to go part of the journey with me, so that I might be relieved of a portion of the tedious scientific work of the expedition, especially taking and computing daily astronomical observations, to which much time has to be devoted. All the work of all kinds eventually fell upon my shoulders, and after departing I found myself filling the posts of surveyor, hydrographer, cartographer, geologist, meteorologist, anthropologist, botanist, doctor, veterinary surgeon, painter, photographer, boat-builder, guide, navigator, etc. The muleteers who accompanied me — only six, all counted — were of little help to me, perhaps the reverse. Considering all the adventures and misfortunes we had, I am sure the reader, after perusing this book, will wonder that we got back at all, and will be indulgent enough to give me a little credit for saving, through innumerable disasters — and perhaps not altogether by mere luck— all my photographs (eight hundred of them), all my note-books, all my scientific observations, as well as all the vocabularies I made of the various Indian languages of tribes found on my way. Also for bringing all my men out alive.

Here are, briefly, a few results of the expedition:

(a) First of all it has proved that, far from being an impenetrable country, as was believed, it is possible for any experienced traveller to cross Brazil in any direction if he can obtain suitable followers.

(b) It has proved that the "millions of savage Indians" supposed to be swarming all over the interior of Brazil do not exist at all. All the pure Indians of Central Brazil taken together may number a few hundreds, or, including half-castes (negroes and Portuguese), a few thousands. As for the wild beasts and snakes, no one ever need fear being troubled by them; they are more afraid of you than you of them, you can take my word for it. So that the terror which has so far prevented people from penetrating the interior has no reasonable ground, and this book ought to be the means of making European people some day swarm to develop that marvellous land, now absolutely uninhabited....
Be not too curious of Good and Evil;
Seek not to count the future waves of Time;
But be ye satisfied that you have light
Enough to take your step and find your foothold.

--T.S. Eliot
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Re: High Adventure

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Joshua Slocum, Sailing Alone Around the World (1901)

http://archive.org/details/sailingalonearou00slocuoft
One midwinter day of 1892, in Boston, where I had been cast up from old ocean, so to speak, a year or two before, I was cogitating whether I should apply for a command, and again eat my bread and butter on the sea, or go to work at the shipyard, when I met an old acquaintance, a whaling-captain, who said: "Come to Fairhaven and I'll give you a ship. But," he added, "she wants some repairs." The captain's terms, when fully explained, were more than satisfactory to me. They included all the assistance I would require to fit the craft for sea. I was only too glad to accept, for I had already found that I could not obtain work in the shipyard without first paying fifty dollars to a society, and as for a ship to command there were not enough ships to go round. Nearly all our tall vessels had been cut down for coal-barges, and were being ignominiously towed by the nose from port to port, while many worthy captains addressed themselves to Sailors' Snug Harbor.

The next day I landed at Fairhaven, opposite New Bedford, and found that my friend had something of a joke on me. For seven years the joke had been on him. The "ship" proved to be a very antiquated sloop called the Spray, which the neighbors declared had been built in the year 1. She was affectionately propped up in a field, some distance from salt water, and was covered with canvas. The people of Fairhaven, I hardly need say, are thrifty and observant. For seven years they had asked, "I wonder what Captain Eben Pierce is going to do with the old Spray?" The day I appeared there was a buzz at the gossip exchange: at last some one had come and was actually at work on the old Spray. "Breaking her up, I s'pose?" "No; going to rebuild her." Great was the amazement. "Will it pay?" was the question which for a year or more I answered by declaring that I would make it pay....

I spent a season in my new craft fishing on the coast, only to find that I had not the cunning properly to bait a hook. But at last the time arrived to weigh anchor and get to sea in earnest. I had resolved on a voyage around the world, and as the wind on the morning of April 24, 1895, was fair, at noon I weighed anchor, set sail, and filled away from Boston, where the Spray had been moored snugly all winter. The twelve-o'clock whistles were blowing just as the sloop shot ahead under full sail. A short board was made up the harbor on the port tack, then coming about she stood seaward, with her boom well off to port, and swung past the ferries with lively heels. A photographer on the outer pier at East Boston got a picture of her as she swept by, her flag at the peak throwing its folds clear. A thrilling pulse beat high in me. My step was light on deck in the crisp air. I felt that there could be no turning back, and that I was engaging in an adventure the meaning of which I thoroughly understood. I had taken little advice from any one, for I had a right to my own opinions in matters pertaining to the sea. That the best of sailors might do worse than even I alone was borne in upon me not a league from Boston docks, where a great steamship, fully manned, officered, and piloted, lay stranded and broken. This was the Venetian. She was broken completely in two over a ledge. So in the first hour of my lone voyage I had proof that the Spray could at least do better than this full-handed steamship, for I was already farther on my voyage than she.

"Take warning, Spray, and have a care," I uttered aloud to my bark, passing fairylike silently down the bay. The wind freshened, and the Spray rounded Deer Island light at the rate of seven knots....
Last edited by Antipatros on Mon Apr 09, 2012 2:18 pm, edited 1 time in total.
Be not too curious of Good and Evil;
Seek not to count the future waves of Time;
But be ye satisfied that you have light
Enough to take your step and find your foothold.

--T.S. Eliot
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Re: High Adventure

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Sir Richard Francis Burton, First Footsteps in East Africa (1894)

Or, An Exploration of Harar

Vol. 1: http://archive.org/details/firstfootstepsin01burtuoft
Vol. 2: http://archive.org/details/firstfootstepsin02burtuoft
Preface to the Memorial Edition

After Richard Burton left Meccah, he returned up the Red Sea to Egypt, and after a short rest, to Bombay. The East India Company Service had long wished to explore Somali-land in Abyssinia, because Berberah, its chief port, is far better than Aden. As Harar, its capital, was the most difficult place, and no white man had ever succeeded in entering it, the whole country being then inhabited by a most dangerous race to deal with, he obtained leave to go there as a private traveller, the Company agreeing to allow him his pay, but no Government protection. He applied for three other Anglo-Indian Officers (amongst them Lieutenant Speke), to tell off to different employments on the coast. Speke was to go to Bunder Guray to buy horses and camels, Herne was to go to Berberah on another errand, and Stroyan on a third errand was to meet him there, whilst Richard Burton was to do the dangerous part, i.e., plunge into the country, and enter Harar as an Arab merchant. This was one of his most splendid and dangerous expeditions, and the least known, partly because his pilgrimage to Meccah was in every man's mouth, and partly because the excitement aroused by the Crimean War had to a large extent deadened the interest in all personal adventure.

He disappeared into the desert for four months, but this unnoticed, unknown, journey has been of great importance to the Egyptians, to the English, and now to the Italian Army. The way was long and weary, adventurous and dangerous, but at last the "Dreadful City" was sighted, and relying on his good Star and audacity, he walked boldly in, sending his compliments to the Amir, and asking for audience. His diplomacy on this occasion, his capacity for passing as an Arab, and his sound Mohammedan Theology, gave him ten days in the City, where he slept every night in peril of his life.

The journey back was full of peril....

Every word of this narrative is full of interest, and ought to be especially so at the present moment to the Italian Army, which now occupies the country that was in those days so difficult to enter.

ISABEL BURTON.
January 25th, 1894.
Be not too curious of Good and Evil;
Seek not to count the future waves of Time;
But be ye satisfied that you have light
Enough to take your step and find your foothold.

--T.S. Eliot
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Re: High Adventure

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Joseph Thomson, Through Masai Land (1887)

A journey of exploration among the snowclad volcanic mountains and strange tribes of eastern equatorial Africa. Being the narrative of the Royal Geographical Society's Expedition to mount Kenia and lake Victoria Nyanza, 1883-1884

http://archive.org/details/throughmasailand01thomuoft
My reason for the publication of the following narrative may be briefly stated. The Expedition which I commanded was of a public character, and it was imperative that some account of its doings should be produced. That being the case, I resolved to clothe the dry bones of a mere report in the flesh and blood of a narrative. I can honestly say that the prospect of writing it was one which had very little attractiveness for me, and that, if I am delighted to hand it over to the reader, it is more because my task is finished than from any expectations of a favourable reception.

I suppose I need hardly attempt to deprecate criticism. Still I may be allowed to remind the reader and reviewer that one who at the age of twentj'-six has undertaken three separate expeditions to the interior of Africa cannot be expected to have had much opportunity to acquire the graces of literature, or an elegant style. I have poured this narrative forth red-hot, without any delicate weighing of words, or conning over of sentences, content that my meaning be expressed, whatever might be its guise....
Be not too curious of Good and Evil;
Seek not to count the future waves of Time;
But be ye satisfied that you have light
Enough to take your step and find your foothold.

--T.S. Eliot
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Isabella Lucy Bird

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This thread has previously featured the adventures of Isabella L. Bird (a.k.a. Isabella Bird-Bishop or Mrs. Bishop) in Japan, Persia and Kurdistan, and Tibet.

The Hawaiian Archipelago (1890)

Six months among the palm groves, coral reefs, and volcanoes of the Sandwich Islands

http://archive.org/details/hawaiianarchipel00bird
Within the last century the Hawaiian islands have been the topic of various works of merit, and some explanation of the reasons which have led me to enter upon the same subject is necessary.

I was travelling for health, when circumstances induced me to land on the group, and the benefit which I derived from the climate tempted me to remain for nearly seven months. During that time the necessity of leading a life of open air and exercise as a means of recovery, led me to travel on horseback to and fro through the islands, exploring the interior, ascending the highest mountains, visiting the active volcanoes and remote regions which are known to few even of the residents, living among the natives, and otherwise seeing Hawaiian life in all its phases.

At the close of my visit, my Hawaiian friends urged me strongly to publish my impressions and experiences, on the ground that the best books already existing, besides being old, treat chiefly of aboriginal customs and habits now extinct, and of the introduction of Christianity, and subsequent historical events. They also represented that I had seen the islands more thoroughly than any foreign visitor, and the volcano of Mauna Loa under specially favourable circumstances, and that I had so completely lived the island life, and acquainted myself with the existing state of the country, as to be rather a kamaina* than a stranger, and that consequently I should be able to write on Hawaii with a degree of intimacy as well as freshness. My friends at home, who were interested in my narratives, urged me to give them to a wider circle, and my inclinations led me in the same direction, with a longing to make others share something of my own interest and enjoyment.

The letters which follow were written to a near relation, and often hastily and under great difficulties of circumstance, but even with these and other disadvantages, they appear to me the best form of conveying my impressions in their original vividness. With the exception of certain omissions and abridgments, they are printed as they were written, and for such demerits as arise from this mode of publication, I ask the kind indulgence of my readers.

Isabella L. Bird.
January, 1875.

* A native word used to signify an old resident
A Lady's Life in the Rocky Mountains (1881)

http://archive.org/details/4edladyslifeinro00birduoft
These letters, as their style sufficiently indicates, were written without the remotest idea of publication. They appeared last year in the Leisure Hour at the request of its editor, and were so favourably received that I venture to present them to the public in a separate form, as a record of very interesting travelling experiences, and of a phase of pioneer life which is rapidly passing away.

October 21, 1879. I. L. B.
The Golden Chersonese and the Way Thither (1883)

http://archive.org/details/goldenchersonese00birduoft
Canton and Saigon, and whatever else is comprised in the second half of my title, are on one of the best beaten tracks of travellers, and need no introductory remarks.

But the Golden Chersonese is still somewhat of a terra incognita; there is no point on its mainland at which European steamers call, and the usual conception of it is as a vast and malarious equatorial jungle sparsely peopled by a race of semi-civilised and treacherous Mohammedans. In fact it is as little known to most people as it was to myself before I visited it, and as reliable information concerning it exists mainly in valuable volumes now out of print, or scattered through blue books and the transactions of the Asiatic Society of Singapore, I make no apology for prefacing my letters from the Malay Peninsula with as many brief preliminary statements as shall serve to make them intelligible....

The Aurea Chersonesus of Ptolemy, the "Golden Chersonese" of Milton, the Malay Peninsula of our day, has no legitimate claim to an ancient history. The controversy respecting the identity of its Mount Ophir with the Ophir of Solomon has been "threshed out" without much result, and the supposed allusion to the Malacca Straits by Pliny is too vague to be interesting....
Be not too curious of Good and Evil;
Seek not to count the future waves of Time;
But be ye satisfied that you have light
Enough to take your step and find your foothold.

--T.S. Eliot
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Re: High Adventure

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Josephine Diebitsch Peary, My Arctic Journal (1893)

A year among ice-fields and Eskimos, with an account of the Great White Journey across Greenland by Robert E. Peary

http://archive.org/details/myarcticjournaly00peariala
Preface

This plain and simple narrative of a year spent by a refined woman in the realm of the dreaded Frost King has been written only after persistent and urgent pressure from friends, by one who shrank from publicity, and who reluctantly yielded to the idea that her experiences might be of interest to others besides her immediate friends.

I have been requested to write a few words of introduction ; and while there may be some to whom it might occur that I was too much interested to perform this task properly, it must nevertheless be admitted that there is probably no one better fitted than myself to do it. Little, indeed, need be said.

The feeling that led Mrs. Peary through these experiences was first and foremost a desire to be by my side, coupled with the conviction that she was fitted physically as well as otherwise to share with me a portion at least of the fatigues and hardships of the work. I fully concurred in this feeling, and yet, in spite of my oft-expressed view that the dangers of life and work in the Arctic regions have been greatly exaggerated, I cannot but admire her courage. She has been where no white woman has ever been, and where many a man has hesitated to go; and she has seen phases of the life of the most northerly tribe of human beings on the globe, and in many ways has been enabled to get a closer insight into their ways and customs than had been obtained before.

I rarely, if ever, take up the thread of our Arctic experiences without reverting to two pictures: one is the first night that we spent on the Greenland shore after the departure of the "Kite," when, in a little tent on the rocks — a tent which the furious wind threatened every moment to carry away bodily — she watched by my side as I lay a helpless cripple with a broken leg, our small party the only human beings on that shore, and the little "Kite," from which we had landed, drifted far out among the ice by the storm, and invisible through the rain. Long afterward she told me that every unwonted sound of the wind set her heart beating with the thoughts of some hungry bear roaming along the shore and attracted by the unusual sight of the tent; yet she never gave a sign at the time of her fears, lest it should disturb me.

The other picture is that of a scene perhaps a month or two later, when — myself still a cripple, but not entirely helpless — this same woman sat for an hour beside me in the stern of a boat, calmly reloading our empty firearms while a herd of infuriated walrus about us thrust their savage heads with gleaming tusks and bloodshot eyes out of the water close to the muzzles of our rifles, so that she could have touched them with her hand, in their efforts to get their tusks over the gunwale and capsize the boat. I may perhaps be pardoned for saying that I never think of these two experiences without a thrill of pride and admiration for her pluck.

In reading the pages of this narrative it should be remembered that within sixty miles of where Kane and his little party endured such untold sufferings, within eighty miles of where Greely's men one by one starved to death, and within less than fifty miles of where Hayes and his party and one portion of the "Polaris" party underwent their Arctic trials and tribulations, this tenderly nurtured woman lived for a year in safety and comfort: in the summer-time climbed over the lichen-covered rocks, picking flowers and singing familiar home songs, shot deer, ptarmigan, and ducks in the valleys and lakes, and even tried her hand at seal, walrus, and narwhal in the bays; and through the long, dark winter night, with her nimble fingers and ready woman's insight, was of inestimable assistance in devising and perfecting the details of the costumes which enabled Astrup and myself to make our journey across the great ice-cap in actual comfort.

Perhaps no greater or more convincing proof than this could be desired of what great improvements have been made in Arctic methods. That neither Mrs. Peary nor myself regret her Arctic experiences, or consider them ill-advised, may be inferred from the fact that she is once more by my side in my effort to throw more light on the great Arctic mystery.

R. E. PEARY,
Civil Engineer, U.S.N.
FALCON HARBOR, BOWDOIN BAY,
GREENLAND, August 20, 1893.
Be not too curious of Good and Evil;
Seek not to count the future waves of Time;
But be ye satisfied that you have light
Enough to take your step and find your foothold.

--T.S. Eliot
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Re: High Adventure

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Dr. Isaac I. Hayes, The Land of Desolation (1872)

Being a personal narrative of observation and adventure in Greenland

http://archive.org/details/landofdesolation00hayeuoft
On a gloomy night in the month of July, 1585, the ship Sunshine, of fifty tons, "fitted out," as the old chronicles inform us, "by divers opulent merchants of London, for the discovery of a north-west passage, came, in a thick and heavy mist, to a place where there was a mighty roaring as of waves dashing on a rocky shore." The captain of this ship was brave old John Davis, who, when he had discovered his perilous situation, put off in a boat, and thereby discovered that his ship was "embayed in fields and hills of ice, the crashing together of which made the fearful sounds that he had heard." The ship drifted helplessly through the night, and when the morning dawned, "the people saw the tops of mountains white with snow, and of a sugar-loaf shape, standing above the clouds; while at their base the land was deformed and rocky, and the shore was everywhere beset with ice, which made such irksome noise that the land was called 'The Land of Desolation.'"

On a gloomy night in the month of July, 1869, the ship Panther, of three hundred and fifty tons, fitted out for a summer voyage by a party in pursuit of pleasure, came in like manner, through a thick and heavy mist, to a place where there was a mighty roaring as of waves dashing on a rocky shore. The captain of this ship was John Bartlett, who, when he had discovered his perilous situation, put off in a boat, and returned with the knowledge that the Panther, like the Sunshine of old, was embayed in "fields and hills of ice," the crashing together of which made the fearful sounds that he had heard; and then, when the morning dawned, "the people saw the tops of mountains white with snow, and of a sugar-loaf shape, standing above the clouds; while at their base the land was deformed and rocky," and the shore was everywhere beset with ice, which made such "irksome noise," that the people knew their ship had drifted to the self-same spot where the Sunshine had drifted nearly three hundred years before, and that the land before them was Davis's "Land of Desolation."...
Be not too curious of Good and Evil;
Seek not to count the future waves of Time;
But be ye satisfied that you have light
Enough to take your step and find your foothold.

--T.S. Eliot
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Re: High Adventure

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Expedition Update: Phase II Begins

http://deepseachallenge.com/latest-news ... -phase-ii/
After its historic achievement of making the first successful solo dive to the Mariana Trench, DEEPSEA CHALLENGE, the joint scientific expedition from James Cameron, National Geographic, and Rolex, shifts from an active expedition at sea to its next phase of scientific analysis, long-term planning, and solicitation of support for science around the expedition as of Friday, April 6, 2012. The prototype submersible DEEPSEA CHALLENGER, which was piloted by Cameron to the deepest point on the planet, will undergo further engineering and diagnostics in advance of future dives. Ongoing examination of the photographic and scientific evidence by scientists and others continues.

Below is a summary of the expedition to date.

• The DEEPSEA CHALLENGER submersible completed a total of 13 test and research dives off the coasts of Australia and Papua New Guinea and at the Challenger Deep in the Mariana Trench between January 31 and April 3, 2012. On March 8 Cameron set the record for a single-manned dive to 27,119 feet (8,265 meters) in the New Britain Trench off Papua New Guinea. An expedition lander, or unmanned research vehicle, captured images of an enormous amphipod—the deepest instance of gigantism reported to date.

• Cameron successfully completed the dive to the Challenger Deep on March 26, reaching 35,756 feet (10,898 meters) and making history as the first individual to reach full ocean depth in a solo-manned vehicle. Cameron spent about three hours on the bottom documenting what he saw and collecting samples. During the dive to the Challenger Deep, Cameron reported that the manipulator arm on the DEEPSEA CHALLENGER malfunctioned when hydraulic fluid leaked but that the prototype submersible was a success. Cameron said later: “The sub worked well as a scientific platform, and we learned a great deal. It’s our hope that others will be encouraged to explore and illuminate this new frontier.”...
Be not too curious of Good and Evil;
Seek not to count the future waves of Time;
But be ye satisfied that you have light
Enough to take your step and find your foothold.

--T.S. Eliot
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Re: High Adventure

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Louis Antoine de Bougainville

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Louis_Anto ... ugainville
Louis-Antoine, Comte de Bougainville (12 November 1729 – 31 August 1811) was a French admiral and explorer. A contemporary of James Cook, he took part in the French and Indian War and the unsuccessful French attempt to defend Canada from Britain. He later gained fame for his expeditions to settle the Falkland Islands and his voyages into the Pacific Ocean....

In 1766 Bougainville received from Louis XV permission to circumnavigate the globe. He would become the 14th navigator in western history, and the first Frenchman, to sail around the world, and the completion of his mission would bolster the prestige of France following its defeats during the Seven Years' War. This was the first expedition circumnavigating the globe with professional naturalists and geographers aboard.

Bougainville left Nantes on 15 November 1766 with two ships: La Boudeuse (captain: Nicolas Pierre Duclos-Guyot) and the Étoile (commanded by François Chenard de la Giraudais). This was a large expedition with a crew of 214 aboard La Boudeuse and 116 aboard the Étoile.

On board was the botanist Philibert Commerçon, who named the flower Bougainvillea, and his valet, later unmasked by the ship's surgeon as Jeanne Baré, possibly Commerçon's mistress; she would become the first woman known to circumnavigate the globe. Other notable people on this expedition were Count Jean-François de Galaup de la Pérouse (member of the crew), the astronomer Pierre-Antoine Veron, the surgeon of La Boudeuse Dr. Louis-Claude Laporte, the surgeon of the Étoile Dr. François Vives, the engineer and cartographer abourd the Étoile Charles Routier de Romainville, the writer and historian Louis-Antoine Starot de Saint-Germain

Tahiti

He saw islands of the Tuamotu group on the following 22 March, on 2 April saw the peak of Mehetea and famously visited the island of Otaheite shortly after and narrowly missed becoming their discoverer, unaware of a previous visit, and claim, by Samuel Wallis in HMS Dolphin less than a year previously. He claimed the island for France and named it New Cythera.

They left Tahiti and sailed westward to southern Samoa and the New Hebrides....
A Voyage Round the World (1772)

Performed by Order of His Most Christian Majesty, In the Year 1766, 1767, 1768, and 1769.by LEWIS DE BOUGAINVILLE, Colonel of Foot, and Commodore of the Expedition, in the Frigate La Boudeuse and the Store-ship L'Etoile

John Reinhold Forster, trans.

http://archive.org/details/VoyageAround ... ille1766-9
http://archive.org/details/voyageroundworld00boug
In February 1764, France began to make a settlement on the Isles Malouines. Spain reclaimed these, isles as belonging to the continent of South America and her right to them having been acknowledged by the king, I received, orders to deliver our settlement to the Spaniards, and to proceed to the East Indies by crossing the South Seas between the Tropics. For this expedition I received the command of the frigate la Boudeuse, of twenty-fix twelve-pounders, and I was to be joined at the Malouines by the store-ship l'Etoile, which was intended to bring me the provisions necessary for a voyage of such a length, and to follow me during the whole expedition. Several circumstances retarded the junction of this Store-vessel, and consequently made my whole voyage near eight months longer than it would otherwise have been.

In the beginning of November, 1766, I went to Nantes, where the Boudeuse had just been built, and where M. Duclos Guyot, a captain of a fire-ship, my second officer, was fitting her out. The 5th of this month we came down from Painbeuf to Mindin, to finish the equipment of her; and on the 15th we sailed from this road for the river de la Plata.

There I was to find the two Spanish frigates, called la Esmeralda and la Liebre, that had left Ferrol the 17th of October, and whose commander was ordered to receive the Isles Molouines, or Falkland's islands, in the name of his Catholic majesty....
Be not too curious of Good and Evil;
Seek not to count the future waves of Time;
But be ye satisfied that you have light
Enough to take your step and find your foothold.

--T.S. Eliot
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Re: High Adventure

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It's a long time since this thread dealt with this intrepid Tsarist explorer.

Nikolai M. Przhewalskii, From Kulja, Across the Tian Shan to Lob-Nor (1879)

E. Delmar Morgan, trans.

http://archive.org/details/cu31924023421856
Another successful step in the exploration of Inner Asia — the basin of Lob-nor, so long and so obstinate a terra incognita — has at length been revealed to science.

As originally contemplated, the starting-point of my expedition was the town of Kulja. Here I arrived at the end of July, 1876, with my two companions, Lieut. Povalo-Schweikofsky, and a volunteer of thie name of Eklon. Adequately supplied this time -with funds, I was able to buy in St. Petersburg and Moscow all tbe requisite stores for so long a journey, and these, together with guns and ammunition (the latter supplied by Government), weighed about two tons. This weight I had to transport from Perm to Kulja on five postal troikas which took me more than a month, delayed by the abominable state of the roads in crossing the Ural.

At Semipalatinsk we were joined by the companions of my last expedition to Mongolia — the Trans-Baikalian Cossacks, Chebayeff and Irinchinoff, who declared their readiness to share with me once again the hardships and privations of a new journey. One other Cossack was also sent from Trans-Baikalia to act as interpreter of the Mongol language, and I took three others at Vernoye from the Semiretchinsk force. Lastly, at Kulja itself I hired a Kirghiz Christian convert, who spoke the Sart language. In this way the personnel of my expedition was formed, but unfortunately I was not nearly so successful in the choice of my companions as I had been on the last occasion.

Nearly three weeks were occupied at Kulja in the final formation and equipment of our caravan, consisting of twenty-four camels and four ridinghorses. The latter were bestridden by myself, my companions, and one of the Cossacks. We Were all admirably armed ; besides fowling-pieces each carried a Berdan rifle swnng over the shoulder, and a brace of pistols in our holsters.

Our original plan was to proceed to Lob-nor, explore as much of this lake and its environs as possible, and then return to Kulja, leave our collections here, and taking our remaining supplies, start for Tibet....
Be not too curious of Good and Evil;
Seek not to count the future waves of Time;
But be ye satisfied that you have light
Enough to take your step and find your foothold.

--T.S. Eliot
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Re: High Adventure

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Sir Thomas E. Gordon, The Roof of the World (1876)

Being a narrative of a journey over the high plateau of Tibet to the Russian frontier and the Oxus sources on Pamir

http://archive.org/details/cu31924023493517
Preface

I have avoided in this narrative going into detail concerning those countries which have already been fully described by modern European travellers, and accordingly little is said about the well-known route from Leh to Yarkand, and thence to Kashghar. I offer my sketches so far, more to illustrate the works and writings of Thompson, Shaw, Hayward, Henderson, and Bellew, than my short account of it and its scenes. Where we left the old trodden paths, as in the Tian Shan and Pamir highlands, I have attempted a more minute account of what we saw and heard in those new fields of exploration and research.

My book, however, makes no pretension to be in any way a record of scientific exploration: it merely relates what fell under "every-day" observation, with the addition of occasional information gathered here and there as we travelled. The idea of my writing it was suggested by my sketches forming such a complete series "from the Indus to the Oxus" as to merit publication simply on the ground of representing to a very great extent life and scenery never before pictured. In considering the form of descriptive text to accompany the sketches, I decided on that of a narrative as better calculated to give interest to the work....
All of which sounds like a Victorian gentleman on a leisurely tour. Scientific curiosity might be qute genuine but still provide a valuable cover story. Lt. Col. Gordon, C.S.I., was actually engaged in crucial military reconnaissance as part of the Great Game:
Struggling at times through snow which came up to the bellies of their ponies, and frequently forced to halt by violent storms, Lieutenant-Colonel Gordon and his party nonetheless rode 400 miles across the Pamirs in three weeks. Unlike the other great mountain systems which con¬verge there - the Hindu Kush, the Karakorams and the Tien Shan - the Pamirs consist of a vast plateau broken by mountains and broad valleys. Known to the tribes living in the surrounding regions as the Bam-i-Dunya, or Roof of the World, they are almost destitute of human habitations, trees and other vegetation. It was the objective of Gordon's party to fill in as many of the blanks on the British staff maps of this little-known region as possible, and to answer certain other crucial strategic questions. The intelligence they returned with in the spring of 1874 was profoundly disturbing.

Provided the right season was chosen, the Pamirs were far from impenetrable to a modern army, even one encumbered with artillery. Indeed, there was little to prevent a Russian force from the Tsar's new garrisons in the Khokand region, just across the Oxus, from crossing the river and swarming down through the passes into Dardistan and Kashmir, and from there into northern India….

In addition to all this, Gordon and his companions made another disturbing discovery. They found that Afghanistan and Kashgaria did not, in fact, meet in this great mountain fastness. A crucial gap fifty miles wide remained between them. Were the Russians to discover this too, then they would be able to claim, through their possession of Khokand, that it belonged to them. They would thus, in Sir Douglas Forsyth's words, be able to interpose 'a narrow wedge of actual Russian territory' between eastern Afghanistan and Kashgaria, thereby bringing them even closer to northern India….

As a result of these unwelcome discoveries, it was decided in Calcutta to encourage the Maharajah of Kashmir, who was allied to Britain by a treaty, to extend his political influence, if not his actual territories, northwards to include Chitral and Yasin, thereby enabling him to exercise some sort of control over the Baroghil and Ishkaman passes. If actual conquest proved necessary, then Britain would be prepared to give him material support….

-- Peter Hopkirk, The Great Game (1992), at 355-357.
A similar gap led to the annexation of the Wakhan corridor to Afghanistan following the Chitral campaign of 1895.
The crucial question now arose of what to do with Chitral. Should it be annexed like Hunza, or be restored to independence under a ruler friendly to Britain? The issue was to become the subject of heated debate in military and political circles, with the forward school inevitably at loggerheads with those who favoured masterly inactivity. Hunza had been occupied to keep it out of Russian hands, and so had Chitra!. But even during the previous month or so circumstances had changed dramatically in the Pamir region. Going almost unnoticed amid the drama surrounding the siege, London had concluded a deal with St Petersburg which finally settled the frontier between Russian Central Asia and eastern Afghan-istan. The Pamir gap, moreover, which had for so long worried British strategists, had at last been closed. With Abdur Rahman's approval, a narrow corridor of land, previously belonging to no one and stretching eastwards as far as the Chinese frontier, now became Afghan sovereign territory. Although no more than ten miles wide in places - the closest that Britain and Russia had yet come to meeting in Central Asia - this corridor ensured that nowhere did their frontiers touch. Admittedly it left the Russians in permanent possession of most of the Pamir region. But the British were aware that if St Petersburg decided to seize this area, they were virtually powerless to prevent it. At least, from Britain's point of view, there was now an officially agreed frontier beyond which St Petersburg could not advance - except, of course, in time of war.…

-- Peter Hopkirk, The Great Game (1992), at 498-499.
Be not too curious of Good and Evil;
Seek not to count the future waves of Time;
But be ye satisfied that you have light
Enough to take your step and find your foothold.

--T.S. Eliot
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Re: High Adventure

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Lewis R. Freeman, In the Tracks of the Trades (1920)

The account of a fourteen thousand mile yachting cruise to the Hawaiis, Marquesas, Societies, Samoas and Fijis

http://archive.org/details/intracksoftrades00freerich
The Weather Bureau, which for 'several weeks had been issuing bulletins of the "Possibly Showers" order, came out unequivocally with "Rain" on the morning of February 4th, and this, no less than the lead-coloured curtain that veiled the Sierra Madres and the windy shimmers in the tails of the clouds that went rushing across the zenith before the gushing east wind, made it plain that the elements, not to be outdone by our amiable friends, were getting together for a special demonstration on their own account in honour of Lurline's departure. The nature of this elemental diversion developed in good time.

Personal good-byes began at the Pasadena station and continued down through Los Angeles to the San Pedro quay. From there, out through the inner harbour, bon voyages became general, and from the engineer of the government dredge, who blew his whistle off with the force of his farewell toots, to the deck hand on a collier who, in lieu of a handkerchief, waved the shirt he was washing, everybody took a hand in the parting demonstration.

Rounding the jetty opposite Deadman's Island, Lurline was sighted lying a half mile to the westward in the backsweep of the outer bay. The crew stood at attention as the Commodore, with a score or more of friends who had come off for a final farewell, stepped aboard, immediately to turn to stowing the small mountain of hand luggage which had come off with the launch. Soon visitors began arriving from the other yachts of the South Coast fleet, and these, reinforced by several press representatives and a number of shore visitors from San Pedro, swelled the farewell party to a size that taxed the standing room capacity of quarter deck and cabin to the utmost.

Just before the sailing hour arrived presentation was made to the Commodore of a large silver loving cup, and this being filled, each visitor, ere he stepped down the gangway, proposed some appropriate toast and drank to a prosperous voyage and safe return.

Meanwhile the sail covers had been removed and the stops cast off, and as the last of the visitors stepped back aboard their waiting launches, all hands tailed on to the main throat and peak halyards and the big sail was smartly hoisted and swayed to place. Foresail, forestay-sail and jib followed. Finally the anchor, clinging tenaciously to the last California mud it was destined to hook its flukes into for many months, was broken out, and, close-hauled on the starboard tack to a light breeze, Lurline swung off past the breakwater and out of the harbour.

At four o'clock Point Firmin Light, distant five miles, bore N.W. by W., and at the same hour the barometer, which had risen rapidly since noon, registered 30.40, about the normal for the southern California coast. The gentle southerly breeze cleared the western sky toward evening and a warm hued sunset blazed out in defiance of the threatening signs of the morning. The yacht slipped easily through the light swell of the channel, her regular curtesies serving only to spangle her glossy sides with sparkling drops of brine and to punctuate her wake at even intervals with swelling knots of foam like the marks on a trailed sounding line.

"Fairweather sunset," said the mate; "but--" and he finished by shaking his head dubiously and proceeding to give orders for swinging the boats inboard and adding extra lashings to the spare spars and waterbutts on the forward deck.

Early in the first watch, and not long after the thin wisp of a new moon had slipped down behind the jagged peaks of Catalina, the wind hauled suddenly to the southeast. Blowing with steadily increasing force, it drove a heavy pall of sooty clouds before it. This, quickly spreading out across the sky, rendered the night so dark that, beyond the ghostly reflections from the binnacle lamps, nothing was visible save the phosphorescent crests of the rapidly rising seas. With this slant of wind the best that we could do on the starboard tack was dead east, and this direction was held until the imminent loom of Point San Juan, and a not-overly-distant roar of breakers, warned us to put about and head off southwesterly between San Clemente and Catalina.

At midnight the barometer was well below 30, and the wind and sea were still rising....
Be not too curious of Good and Evil;
Seek not to count the future waves of Time;
But be ye satisfied that you have light
Enough to take your step and find your foothold.

--T.S. Eliot
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After the "Bounty"

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Ida Lee, Captain Bligh's Second Voyage to the South Sea (1920)

http://archive.org/details/captainblighssec00blig
The second voyage of Captain Bligh to the South Sea, so far as I know, has never been published. A short description of the passage of his ships, the "Providence" and the "Assistant," through Torres Strait, was included in his work Terra Australis, by Matthew Flinders, who served as a midshipman in the "Providence". These particulars, however, were taken from Flinders' own log. Written in 1791-93 Bligh's log-books, after being for some time at the Admiralty, were lent to the Great Exhibition of 1851. They were not afterwards returned to Whitehall, but remained at South Kensington undisturbed and unsought for, until Mr. Perrin, the present Admiralty Librarian, to whom my cordial thanks are due for permission to transcribe them, recovered the forgotten volumes and replaced them in the Admiralty Library.

Interest in this second voyage of Bligh may possibly have been over-shadowed by the popularity of the story of his first voyage, which included the "Mutiny of the 'Bounty'". Dampier, Anson, and Cook on returning to England had given glowing accounts of the virtues of the breadfruit, and in 1787, when King George III complied with a request from the merchants of the West Indies to introduce the tree into those islands, Bligh was placed in command of the ship chosen to carry out this object....

The history of the mutiny which brought the voyage of that ship to a disastrous conclusion, and nearly cost Bligh and his loyal comrades their lives, has been told many times. A brief account of it has been included here, but primarily for comparison of the course taken by the ship's launch in which Bligh was turned adrift by the mutineers with that of the "Providence" and "Assistant". The second voyage contained no such thrilling incidents, yet it also deserves a place in the history of exploration; not only because Bligh succeeded in carrying out the mission entrusted to him, but also because of the new and valuable information that he was able to give concerning the different places visited by the ships, and the various islands which lay in their track. On Bligh's return to England after his boat voyage in March, 1790, he had been warmly welcomed by the nation and praised for his courage and skill, being promoted first to the rank of Commander, and soon afterwards to that of Post Captain. King George was particularly enthusiastic, and directed that Captain Bligh should be assigned two ships, and that he should go a second time to Tahiti and carry out the instructions which had been previously given to him. He was also ordered to make a complete examination of Torres Strait....
Voyage of H.M.S. Pandora

Despatched to Arrest the Mutineers of the 'Bounty' in the South Seas, 1790-1791

Being the narratives of Captain Edward Edwards, R.N., the commander, and George Hamilton, the surgeon; with an introduction and notes by Basil Thomson

http://archive.org/details/voyageofhmspando22834gut
Introduction

None of the minor incidents in our naval history has inspired so many writers as the Mutiny of the "Bounty". Histories, biographies and romances, from Bligh's narrative in 1790 to Mr. Becke's "Mutineers" in 1898, have been founded upon it; Byron took it for the theme of the least happy of his dramatic poems; and all these, not because the mutiny left any mark upon history, but because it ranks first among the stories of the sea, instinct with the living elements of romance, of primal passion and of tragedy--all moving to a happy ending in the Arcadia of Pitcairn Island. And yet, while every incident in the moving story, even to the evidence in the famous court-martial, has been discussed over and over again, there has been lying in the Record Office for more than a century an autograph manuscript, written by one of the principal actors in the drama, which no one has thought it worth while to print....

Bligh was singularly ill-fitted for the command. While he had undoubted ability, his whole career shows him to have been wanting in the tact and temper without which no one can successfully lead men; and in this venture his own defects were aggravated by the inefficiency of his officers. He took in his cargo of bread-fruit trees at Tahiti, and there was no active insubordination until he reached Tonga on the homeward voyage. At sunrise on April 28th, 1789, the crew mutinied under the leadership of Fletcher Christian, the Master's Mate, whom Bligh's ungoverned temper had provoked beyond endurance. The seamen had other motives. Bligh had kept them far too long at Tahiti, and during the five months they had spent at the island, every man had formed a connection among the native women, and had enjoyed a kind of life that contrasted sharply with the lot of bluejackets a century ago. Forcing Bligh, and such of their shipmates as were loyal to him, into the launch, and casting them adrift with food and water barely sufficient for a week's subsistence, they set the ship's course eastward, crying "Huzza for Tahiti!" There followed an open boat voyage that is unexampled in maritime history. The boat was only 23 feet long; the weight of eighteen men sank her almost to the gunwale; the ocean before them was unknown, and teeming with hidden dangers; their only arms against hostile natives were a few cutlasses, their only food two ounces of biscuit each a day; and yet they ran 3618 nautical miles in forty-one days, and reached Timor with the loss of only one man, and he was killed by the natives at the very outset.

The mutineers fared as mutineers have always fared. Having sailed the ship to Tahiti, they fell out among themselves, half taking the "Bounty" to the uninhabited island of Pitcairn, where they were discovered twenty-seven years later, and half remaining at Tahiti. Of these two were murdered, four were drowned in the wreck of the "Pandora", three were hanged in England, and six were pardoned, one living to become a post-captain in the navy, another to be gunner on the "Blenheim" when she foundered with Sir Thomas Troubridge.

One boat voyage only is recorded as being longer than Bligh's. In 1536 Diego Botelho Pereira made the passage from Portuguese India to Lisbon in a native "fusta", or lateen rigged boat, but a little larger than Bligh's. He had, however, covered her with a deck, and provisioned her for the venture, and he was able to replenish his stock at various points on the voyage.

In 1790 the publication of Bligh's account of his sufferings excited the strongest public sympathy, and the Admiralty lost no time in fitting out an expedition to search for the mutineers, and bring them home to punishment. The "Pandora", frigate, of 24 guns, was commissioned for the purpose, and manned by 160 men, composed largely of landsmen, for every trained seaman in the navy had gone to man the great fleet then assembling at Portsmouth under Lord Howe. Captain Edward Edwards, the officer chosen for the command, had a high reputation as a seaman and a disciplinarian, and from the point of view of the Admiralty, who intended the cruise simply as a police mission without any scientific object, no better choice could have been made. Their orders to him were to proceed to Tahiti, and, not finding the mutineers there, to visit the different groups of the Society and Friendly Islands, and the others in the neighbouring parts of the Pacific, using his best endeavours to seize and bring home in confinement the whole, or such part of the delinquents as he might be able to discover. "You are," the orders ran, "to keep the mutineers as closely confined as may preclude all possibility of their escaping, having, however, proper regard to the preservation of their lives, that they may be brought home to undergo the punishment due to their demerits." Edwards belonged to that useful class of public servant that lives upon instructions. With a roving commission in an ocean studded with undiscovered islands the possibilities of scientific discovery were immense, but he faced them like a blinkered horse that has his eyes fixed on the narrow track before him, and all the pleasant byways of the road shut out. A cold, hard man, devoid of sympathy and imagination, of every interest beyond the straitened limits of his profession, Edwards in the eye of posterity was almost the worst man that could have been chosen. For, with a different commander, the voyage would have been one of the most important in the history of South Sea discovery, and the account he has written of it compares in style and colour with a log-book.

In Edwards' place a more genial man, a Catoira, a Wallis, or a Cook, would have written a journal of discovery that might have taken a place in the front rank of the literature of travel. He would have investigated the murder of La Pérouse's boat's crew in Tutuila on the spot; he would have rescued the survivors of that ill-fated expedition whose smoke-signals he saw on Vanikoro; he would have brought home news of the great Fiji group through which Bligh passed in the "Bounty's" launch; he might even have discovered Fletcher Christian's colony of mutineers in Pitcairn. But, on the other hand, humanity to his prisoners might have furnished them with the means of escape, and his ardour for discovery might have led him into dangers from which no one would have survived to tell the tale. Edwards had the qualities of his defects. If he treated his prisoners harshly, he prevented them from contaminating his crew, and brought the majority of them home alive through all the perils of shipwreck and famine. In all the attacks that have been made upon him there is not a word against his character as a plain, straight-forward officer, who could lick a crew of landsmen into shape, and keep them loyal to him through the stress of shipwreck and privation. If he was callous to the sufferings of his prisoners, he was at least as indifferent to his own. If he felt no sympathy with others, he asked for none with himself. If he won no love, he compelled respect...

Fortunately for us, the "Pandora" carried a certain rollicking, irresponsible person as surgeon. George Hamilton has been called "a coarse, vulgar, and illiterate man, more disposed to relate licentious scenes and adventures, in which he and his companions were engaged, than to give any information of proceedings and occurrences connected with the main object of the voyage." From this puritanical criticism most readers will dissent.... His book, with all its faults of scandalous plain speech, is one that few naval surgeons of that day could have written. The style, though flippant, is remarkable for a cynical but always good-natured humour, and on the rare occasions when he thought it professionally incumbent on him to be serious, as in his discussion of the best dietary for long voyages, and the physical effects of privations, his remarks display observation and good sense. It must be admitted, I fear, that he relates certain of his own and his shipmates' adventures ashore with shameless gusto, but he wrote in an age that loved plain speech, and that did not care to veil its appetite for licence. Like Edwards, he tells us little of the prisoners after they were consigned to "Pandora's Box." His narrative is valuable as a commentary on Edwards' somewhat meagre report, and for the sidelights which it throws upon the manners of naval officers of those days. Even Edwards, to whom he is always loyal, does not escape his little shaft of satire when he relates how the stern captain was driven to conduct prayers in the most desperate portion of the boat voyage. His book, published at Berwick in 1793, has now become so rare that Mr. Quaritch lately advertised for it three times without success, and therefore no excuse is needed for reprinting it....

In the matter of "Pandora's Box," there were excuses for Edwards, who was bitterly attacked afterwards for his inhumanity. One of the chiefs had warned him that there was a plot between the natives and the mutineers to cut the cable of the "Pandora" in the night. Most of the mutineers were connected through their women with influential chiefs, and nothing was more likely than that such a rescue should be attempted. His own crew, moreover, were human. They could see for themselves the charms of a life in Tahiti; they could hear from the prisoners the consideration in which Englishmen were held in this delightful land. What had been possible in the "Bounty" was possible in the "Pandora". Edwards regarded his prisoners as pirates, desperate with the weight of the rope about their necks. His orders were definite--to consider nothing but the preservation of their lives--and he did his duty in his own way according to his lights....

"Pandora's Box" certainly needed some excuse. A round house, eleven feet long, accessible only through a scuttle in the roof, was built upon the quarter deck as a prison for the fourteen mutineers, who were ironed and handcuffed. Hamilton says that the roundhouse was built partly out of consideration for the prisoners themselves, in order to spare them the horrors of prolonged imprisonment below in the tropics, and that although the service regulations restricted prisoners to two-thirds allowance, Edwards rationed them exactly like the ship's company. Morrison, however, who seems to have belonged to that objectionable class of seamen--the sea-lawyer--having kept a journal of grievances against Bligh when on the "Bounty", and preserved it even in "Pandora's Box," gives a very different account, and Peter Heywood, a far more trustworthy witness, declared in a letter to his mother, that they were kept "with both hands and both legs in irons, and were obliged to eat, drink, sleep, and obey the calls of nature, without ever being allowed to get out of this den."...
Be not too curious of Good and Evil;
Seek not to count the future waves of Time;
But be ye satisfied that you have light
Enough to take your step and find your foothold.

--T.S. Eliot
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Re: High Adventure

Post by Antipatros »

On 4 June 1942, a special guest visited Finland to personally wish Mannerheim a happy 75th birthday. That guest was Adolf Hitler.

Alpo Ratia, Mannerheim's Central Asian Expedition of 1906-1908

http://idp.bl.uk/archives/news15/idpnews_15.a4d
http://idp.bl.uk/downloads/newsletters/IDPNews15.pdf
By the turn of the nineteenth century the focus of international Orientalist interest had shifted from the Near East to Central Asia. Leading Orientalists led expeditions in search of hidden treasure along the Silk Road in Chinese Turkestan. At the same major powers (Great Britain, Japan and Russia) sought to enlarge their respective sphere of influence and sent agents there, sometimes in the guise of scientific explorers.

The Russian General Staff commissioned a Finn, Baron Carl Gustaf Mannerheim (1867-1951), a talented cavalry officer in imperial service, to undertake a military intelligence-gathering mission through China's northern provinces. The aim was to map certain routes, verify the population census in these provinces, investigate the progress made in modernizing the military, administrative and educational systems, and also to ascertain the political aspirations and divisions among non-Chinese and Chinese: in short, to assess China's defence capacity and Russia's strategic options.

Keen also to promote science in the Grand Duchy of Finland, Mannerheim contacted Senator Otto Donner (1835-1909) and through his good offices negotiated with the Finno-Ugrian Society and with trustees of the Antell Fund. Mannerheim was asked to copy inscriptions, purchase ancient manuscripts, archaeological and ethnographical artefacts, make anthropometric measurements, photograph racial types, and collect ethnographic and linguistic material about the little known peoples of North China.

The Society placed funds at Mannerheim's disposal, while the Antell trustees set funds aside for the State Historical Museum (later renamed the National Museum) to purchase antiquities and ethnographic items from Mannerheim. However, because Chinese culture was deemed to be well-known, 'Han' materials were excluded.

Mannerheim's Central Asian expedition lasted nearly two years (29 July 1906 to 20 July 1908). He set off from Andizhan in Russian Turkestan and, in stages, traversed China's Xinjiang, Gansu, Shaanxi and Shanxi provinces on his way to Kalgan near Beijing (see map below). The journey, about 14,000 km, was made mainly on horseback and Mannerheim was accompanied by two Cossacks, a Chinese interpreter, a cook, and several caravan men.

Mannerheim's ancient manuscript and archaeological acquisitions, such as they are, came solely from Xinjiang. Antiquities purchased from local treasure hunters on the southern route in the Khotan area included 76 coins, a small number of text fragments in Sanskrit and Khotanese, engraved gems and terracotta artefacts. At Kelpin, on the north-west edge of the Taklamakan, Mannerheim tried his hand at excavation, but without marked success. While passing through Torgut and Kirghiz areas he photographed numerous inscriptions and rock-drawings. At Kuldja and on the Northern Silk Road at Karashahr he carried out minor excavations and recovered some potsherds. Further east in the Turfan area he made excursions to the sites of Yarkhoto, Idiqut Shahri and Chiktym, but was so dismayed by the mutilations wrought by contemporary archaeologists that he refrained from all further excavation. Nevertheless, he purchased artefacts and a sizeable number (1971) of text fragments in Chinese, as well as documents in Uighur and Middle Persian from locals. These had presumably been found in ruins near Turfan.

The Mystery of a Missed Opportunity

Mannerheim's journey continued south-eastwards along the edge of the desert. In October 1907 his path crossed that of Aurel Stein's caravan at Hami [Mannerheim's letter from Lanzhou dated 17 February 1908 to Senator Donner quoted in Pirjo Varjola (ed.), C. G. Mannerheim in Central Asia, 1906-8, National Board of Antiquities, Helsinki, 1999, pp. 59-60.] Having entered Gansu Province, Mannerheim's small caravan arrived in Dunhuang on November 14th and stayed there until the morning of the 18th. Mystery still surrounds this sojourn. Why did Mannerheim not avail himself of the opportunity of procuring texts from the Caves of a Thousand Buddhas at Mogao? Stein had left thousands behind and Pelliot only arrived in February 1908. Several explanations have been offered for Mannerheim's inaction at Dunhuang, but none are wholly convincing. Least satisfactory is the rationalization found in his Memoirs. [C. G. E. Mannerheim, The Memoirs of Marshall Mannerheim, Cassel, London, 1953, p. 55.] Mannerheim's travel diary, published in 1940, describes the garrison town of Dunhuang, its layout and sights, administration, economy, population and myths.

There is a passing mention of the grottoes and a somewhat disjointed account of the unfavourable curcumstances encountered. According to his diary entry for 20 November 1907, written in Anxi, the weather during his stay at Dunhuang was turning inclement, and shortly before leaving the town:
'I had intended to visit a miao (temple) called 'Chien fo-tung', lying in a gorge in the mountains to the S. ... However, the pheasants and djeirans were too tempting. [C. G. E. Mannerheim, Resa genom Asien, 2 delen., Lindfors, Stockholm, 1940, p. 58. Ed. Note: Stein's field diary for October records his meeting Clementi in Oct. 19 in Hami (MSS. Stein 200, ff.49, Ruins of Desert Cathay, Vol. 2, p. 344. ) but no meeting with Mannerheim, although he reports meeting a traveller on Oct. 29 on the road from Hami who told him 'of the arrival of a Fa-nan, who must be Mannerheim'. This suggests that Stein was cognizant of Mannerheim's proximity but did not meet him personally.] After losing much time in shooting we reached the mouth of the gorge, but the sun was already so low that we had no alternative than to drop all idea of the 'thousand gods' and try to find out way back to the sarai before nightfall.'[Ibid. p. 59]
The latest of a series of articles on Mannerheim's Asian expedition has focussed attention on the missed opportunity at Dunhuang. Accepting the above account at face value and citing earlier parallels from the diary, the author has drawn a tragicomic conclusion:
'if Mannerheim had had a more skilled cook, he probably would have gone to the Mogao grottoes instead of hunting for this 'welcome change' to his diet and perhaps been able to purchase something before the arrival of Pelliot. This a great scientific treasure was exchanged for roast pheasant and gazelle.' [Harry Halen, 'Baron Mannerheim's Hunt for Central Asian Manuscripts' in P. Varjola op. cit. p. 51.]
Perhaps so, but it is equally plausible that Mannerheim needed some recreation and respite from his demanding mission.

Most likely deeper motives lay behind Mannerheim's inaction at Mogao. Had it been his serious intent to procure texts, he could delayed his departure from Dunhuang and at least have made an earnest effort. That he did not do so suggests that, in his estimation, the potential gains were outweighed by the potential risks (politico-military, financial etc.) For the past fifteen months the gathering of military intelligence had been his primary obligation. Two strategic questions which the Russian General Staff wanted him to investigate were the feasibility of the Hexi Corridor as a route for regular and irregular forces, and of Lanzhou as a base and further staging-area. Mannerheim was still at the western end of this route mapping garrison towns, and the procurement of many ancient texts and especially their transport through China proper, might have resulted in disputes with officialdom, in negative publicity, and in loss of further co-operation at the highest levels.

Prudence with funds also probably played a role. Mannerheim had been in dire financial straits on arrival in Urumqi, where his travel coffer was at last replenished. In a letter from Urumqi dated 4 August 1908 to Senator Donner, Mannerheim stated that he expected costs to be higher in China proper and that, if the Finno-Ugrian Society wished him to carry out further archaeological investigations, funds should be remitted to him at, for example, Xi'an in Shaanxi Province. [Mannerheim's letter from Urumqi dated 4 August 1907 to Donner quoted in P. Varjola, op. cit. p. 58.] No answer had been received to this while he was at Dunhuang. Two things were certain: funds could not be expected from his Antell trustees; and, at worst, he might have to bear all the costs himself and be stuck with a heap of manuscripts which, as the Finnish saying goes, were 'Hebrew' to him.

That Mannerheim kept silent about his real motives for his inaction at Mogao is hardly surprising. Both his travel diaries and Memoirs were edited with a Finnish and Western readership in mind, and, moreover, at critical times: the Winter and Cold Wars respectively. In both cases it would have been highly inexpedient for the Commander-in-Chief or Marshal of Finland to justify that inaction by citing former obligations from the start of the century. National interests were now also at stake. Nor would the citing of financial prudence bear weight with Orientalists of this later age.

Alpo Ratia is an independent scholar based in Turku, Finland.
Be not too curious of Good and Evil;
Seek not to count the future waves of Time;
But be ye satisfied that you have light
Enough to take your step and find your foothold.

--T.S. Eliot
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Marcus
Posts: 2409
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Location: Alaska

Low key adventure . . .

Post by Marcus »

While living here may not qualify as "high" adventure, we nevertheless live our summers in an atmosphere of ever-present, low-key adventure. From the front page of today's Peninsula Clarion:
Fresh tracks: Time to be bear aware on Peninsula
Posted: April 17, 2012 - 8:28am
Few of us go mushroom hunting, hiking, or anywhere in the woods this time of year without a can of bear spray, a 12 gauge, or a big pistol. Bear attacks don't happen often, but when they do, well, it's pretty nasty.
"The jawbone of an ass is just as dangerous a weapon today as in Sampson's time."
--- Richard Nixon
******************
"I consider looseness with words no less of a defect than looseness of the bowels."
—John Calvin
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Re: High Adventure

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Apologies for the cumbersomeness of the online versions of this book.

Nicholas Roerich, Altai-Himalaya (1929)

A Travel Diary

http://www.roerich-izvara.ru/eng/roeric ... malaya.htm
http://www.roerich.org/books/Altai-Himalaya-by-GB.doc
Introduction

On May 8, 1923, Nicholas Roerich left America for India, and he has been wandering about in remote, dangerous and seldom-visited parts of Asia ever since. “Altai-Himalaya” is the record of his mission, just as his series of pictures “Tibetan Paths,” “Banners of the East,” “His Country,” are records in terms of paint. But “Altai-Himalaya,” though penned on horseback and in the tent, under conditions the most difficult, is as much more, and as much richer than the ordinary diary of travel, as his paintings of the Himalayas are more than a literal transcription of some of the earth’s most magnificent scenery. For in whatever medium Roerich works, or in whatever he is expressing, there shines forth not only the artist, but the embodied intelligence – the man, the whole character of the man. Though sincere and simple, it is a character compounded of such unusual elements as to be on its esoteric side uncomprehended.

Now, “esoteric” is to most ears either a meaningless or a hateful word: what do I mean by it in this connection? I should perform for Roerich an ill service if I failed to answer such a question, because it would be to avoid mentioning what seems to me the very raison d'être of his journey, his art, his life. And yet how is it possible to make intelligible or even plausible what I have in mind? Without attempting to elucidate, explain or justify it, therefore, I shall simply say that there is a tenable point of view from which one may regard Roerich as an envoy of those powers which preside over the life and evolution of humanity in the same sense that gardeners preside over a garden: that he journeys into desolate and forbidden lands for the fulfillment of a mission the purpose of which will increasingly reveal itself. Whether one believes this or not, it would be hard to imagine a better ambassador of good will from the West to the East, for the reason that although he represents the summit of European accomplishment and culture, Roerich is deeply Oriental in his temperament, sympathies and point of view.

One has only to look at him to see – or, if you must have it so, imagine – the reincarnated Eastern sage. (Little Tibet), and in the white vastness of Siberia he was received with an honor, accorded a confidence and even an affection, quite different from the ordinary attitude of these peoples toward strangers, which has the reputation of being covertly or openly hostile. Roerich and his caravan encountered frustration and hostility, too, and in full measure, but it is interesting to note how exactly in proportion to the spiritual development of the various peoples he encountered was their response to his unique quality, and their recognition of the unprecedented nature of his mission among them.

This book was written “in the saddle,” more literally than figuratively. There is a certain vividness, immediacy, authenticity about it for this reason, giving the reader a sense of actual participation perhaps impossible to be imparted in any other way, together with intimate glimpses of the workings of the author’s mind in the presence of sublime scenery, new human types, strange manners and customs, and under the assaults of hardship, danger, and the stresses and strains of exploration in almost untrodden lands. Roerich is a man of original, strong and definite personality, of which everything he does bears the stamp. His expressions are themselves revealing, eloquent – not only of himself, but of the thing he is attempting to describe. The one-, two-and three-word sentences, the subjects without predicates – they have been suffered to remain just as he wrote them because they have so much the merit of the sketch, the jotting, put down in the moment of that “first fine careless rapture” which in a more premeditated form of art is likely to leak away.

This is a book whose surface exists for the sake of its depth, and even for concealing from all but the most penetrating, what that depth contains, as surfaces sometimes do....
Be not too curious of Good and Evil;
Seek not to count the future waves of Time;
But be ye satisfied that you have light
Enough to take your step and find your foothold.

--T.S. Eliot
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Re: High Adventure

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Philip Ayre, ed., The voyages and adventures of Capt. Barth. Sharp and others, in the South Sea (1684)

Being a journal of the same

Also Capt. Van Horn with his Buccanieres surprizing of la Vera Cruz

To which is added The true Relation of Sir Henry Morgan, his Expedition against the Spaniards in the West-Indies, and his taking Panama. Together with The President of Panama's Account of the same Expedition: Translated out of Spanish.

And Col. Beeston's adjustment of the Peace between the Spaniards and English in the West Indies


http://archive.org/details/voyagesadventure00ayre
The true Relation of Admiral Henry Morgans Expedition against
the Spaniards in the West-Indies in the Year 1670.


Admira! Morgan on the fourteenth day of August 1670. put to sea, with eleven Sail of Ships, and six hundred Men , and on the second day of September following, arrived at a small Island called the Isle of Asb, which was to be the place of Rendezvous of all his Fleet for that Expedition. From whence Vice-Admiral Collier upon the sixth of the same Month was dispatched with six Sail, and three hundred and fifty Men, for the Coast of the Main, to get Prisoners for Intelligence, and Victuals for the whole Fleet. The last day of September arrived Captain Morris in a small Ship ill manned, and brought with him Emanuel de Rivera his Vessel of eight Sures, who had lately burnt the Coasts of Jamaica, and had sent a Challenge to dare out the best Ship of that Island to come and fight him; he was taken at the East end of Cuba....
Be not too curious of Good and Evil;
Seek not to count the future waves of Time;
But be ye satisfied that you have light
Enough to take your step and find your foothold.

--T.S. Eliot
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Re: High Adventure

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Sherman F. Denton, Incidents of a Collector's Rambles (1889)

In Australia, New Zealand, and New Guinea

http://archive.org/details/incidentsofcolle00dentrich
THE desire to see the world is almost as universal as love or hunger. To visit countries strange and new, in search of knowledge and pleasure, adds a zest to existence that the quiet dweller in one locality can know little about. Into one year of travel is often crowded more of experience and adventure than is contained in ten years of ordinary life; and, as may readily be imagined, when I received a letter from my father, Dec. 5, 1881, asking me to go to Australia to help him, I was greatly elated....
__________

Early the next morning we started out, and kept on steadily until noon; when we took a bath in a clear stream, and lay down for a short nap under the trees. We were awakened by some one shouting, and found that the natives had discovered us. Shelley went to meet them; but they ran away at first, and it was not until he made friendly signs, that they stood their ground. There were three of them, two men and a boy, of the Coyara tribe; and they were all trembling from fear or excitement.

After some persuasion, they came back to where father and I were. They seemed pleasant and friendly, and asked us many questions, and made motions; but we could not understand them, although they seemed to have no trouble in comprehending every motion we made.

We gave them to understand that we wished to go to Lapidoma, and they picked up our heavy packs and started off with them, seemingly pleased to help us. It was all we could do to keep up, and the perspiration was running down our faces before they halted for a rest. They took us directly to Lapidoma, where we arrived about four o'clock. This was a strange village, composed of fifteen or twenty houses, and surrounded by banana and sugar-cane plantations, situated at the base of the Astralabe Mountains.

What interested and surprised us most, however, was a number of houses in the trees; some of them at a height of sixty feet. They were well built, and rattan or bamboo ladders extended from the ground to just below the platform of the house. Father thought they were used to defend themselves from their enemies, in case of an attack; and we afterwards found that to be a correct idea. In the houses are often stored yams and tarus, wood and water, with a ton or two of stones to throw down at their enemies; and spears, in bundles, for the same purpose. The platform of sticks, below the house, is used to stand upon when throwing stones and spears; and with their primitive methods of cutting down trees, these houses must be almost impregnable to an enemy....

The men were not the lazy savages generally pictured to us. They worked in the gardens, carried heavy packs, and hunted the kangaroo and wild boar. The best of feeling seemed to prevail among them; and their village was the scene of dancing, merrymaking, and laughter.

When we hired the packers, we made them understand, by motions, what we would pay; and when the "carry" was over, the goods were placed on the ground, in order, and we put that which we had promised at each bundle. There was no scramble for the trade we gave, which consisted of sugar, salt, knives, and hatchets; and not until we informed them that all was settled, did they take what belonged to them.

Each person owned the property thus earned; and I well remember a little girl, not over ten years old, who carried a twenty-five-pound bag of shot, all day over the mountains, for the trade she obtained for it....
Be not too curious of Good and Evil;
Seek not to count the future waves of Time;
But be ye satisfied that you have light
Enough to take your step and find your foothold.

--T.S. Eliot
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Re: High Adventure

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Frederick A. Cook, M.D., Through the First Antarctic Night, 1898-1899 (1900)

A narrative of the voyage of the "Belgica" among newly discovered lands and over an unknown sea about the South Pole

http://archive.org/details/throughfirstan00cook
For three hundred years explorers have been active in pushing aside the realms of the unknown towards the north pole; but the equally interesting south pole has, during all this time, been almost wholly neglected. There have been expeditions to the far south, but compared to arctic ventures they have been so few and their work within the polar circle has been so little that the results have been largely forgotten. It is not because valuable results have not been obtained in the antarctic, but because the popular interest in the arctic has completely overshadowed the reports of the antipodes. The search for the North-west and the North-east passages, which commerce demanded to reach the trade of the Orient during the seventeenth and the early part of the eighteenth centuries, fixed the public eye persistently northward. This extended effort to find an easy path to the wealth of Asia was fruitless, but it was followed by a whale fishery, a sealing industry, and a fur trade, which has proven a priceless boon to mankind. As a result of these two periods of trade exploration, we have now entered upon a third stage, a period of scientific research which will not, and should not, end until the entire area is outlined in the growing annals of exact knowledge.

The antarctic has a history somewhat similar, but it is almost forgotten....

This third period of antarctic research, like the third stage of arctic exploration, is wholly in the interest of science.

The first country to complete the outfit of a modern expedition was Belgium. England and Germany now have expeditions in preparation, but the honour of being the first to send a scientific venture, with trained specialists and appropriate equipment to the antarctic, belongs to Belgium....
Adrien de Gerlache, Belgica
Belgian Antarctic Expedition 1897 - 1899


http://www.coolantarctica.com/Antarctic ... elgica.htm
The voyage of the Belgica under the command of Adrienne de Gerlache set out from Antwerp, Belgium at the end of August 1897. It is one of the most fascinating of the early Antarctic expeditions and also probably the least comfortable one to have taken part in for all concerned.

It is notable for being the first expedition to Antarctic of a purely scientific nature, and was the first time that anyone had over wintered in Antarctica proper. A group of sealers had wintered on King George Island in the South Shetlands in 1821 after their ship was blown off in a storm and rescue was not possible until the next summer, but this was the first time a winter had been spent at Antarctic continental latitudes. It was also an unplanned winter - although, perhaps for the expedition leader de Gerlache it wasn't so accidental - for the rest of the men at least, there was no intention nor notice of overwintering.

Amongst the crew were Roald Amundsen, later to be the first man to sail the North West Passage and also to reach the South Pole, and Frederick A. Cook, a man who would contentiously later claim to be the first man to reach the North Pole....
Last edited by Antipatros on Wed Apr 25, 2012 7:26 pm, edited 1 time in total.
Be not too curious of Good and Evil;
Seek not to count the future waves of Time;
But be ye satisfied that you have light
Enough to take your step and find your foothold.

--T.S. Eliot
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Re: High Adventure

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Frederick A. Cook, M.D., To the Top of the Continent (1908)

Discovery, exploration and adventure in sub-arctic Alaska. The first ascent of Mt. McKinley, 1903-1906.

http://archive.org/details/totopofcontinent00cook
In the development of the project for the conquest of the mountain which this volume narrates, a series of barriers arose which seemed almost unsurmountable. A great mountain was rediscovered in an unexplored district and christened in honour of our late President, William McKinley. Preliminary investigation proved this mountain to be the highest peak in North America. Hidden in the heart of Alaska, far from the sea, far from all lines of travel, this newly crowned alpine rival pierced the frosty blue of the Arctic within reach of the midnight sun. The recognition of the pre-eminence of this peak, together with its fitting designation, framed a national mountaineering challenge which we took up fully realising the strenuous task which it entailed. The mere effort of getting to the base of the mountain with sufficient supplies to prolong the siege required the exploration of thousands of miles of trackless wilderness. Unlike most other big mountains this giant uplift rises suddenly out of a low country and the climb begins over ice torn by crevasses and weighted down by sharp stones. Above were 19,000 feet of unknowable troubles, wherein the rush of the crumbling, tumbling earth with its storms and snows must be guarded against. Such an expedition involved most of the difficulties of arctic travel and all of the hardships of high alpine ascents multiplied many times, but with the working incentive of pioneer adventure, and with the spiritual exhiliration of discovery, all these obstacles, it was hoped, would eventually be bridged.

Mountaineering as we assume it in this venture is a department of exploration, and as such it is worthy of a higher appreciation than that usually accorded it....
Be not too curious of Good and Evil;
Seek not to count the future waves of Time;
But be ye satisfied that you have light
Enough to take your step and find your foothold.

--T.S. Eliot
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Re: High Adventure

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From PBS American Experience:

Amelia Earhart: The Price of Courage

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Amelia Earhart: The Official Website

http://www.ameliaearhart.com/about/bio.html
Biography

When 10-year-old Amelia Mary Earhart saw her first plane at a state fair, she was not impressed. "It was a thing of rusty wire and wood and looked not at all interesting," she said. It wasn't until Earhart attended a stunt-flying exhibition, almost a decade later, that she became seriously interested in aviation. A pilot spotted Earhart and her friend, who were watching from an isolated clearing, and dove at them. "I am sure he said to himself, 'Watch me make them scamper,'" she said. Earhart, who felt a mixture of fear and pleasure, stood her ground. As the plane swooped by, something inside her awakened. "I did not understand it at the time," she said, "but I believe that little red airplane said something to me as it swished by." On December 28, 1920, pilot Frank Hawks gave her a ride that would forever change her life. "By the time I had got two or three hundred feet off the ground," she said, "I knew I had to fly."...
For the latest attempt to find her missing Electra, see here.
Be not too curious of Good and Evil;
Seek not to count the future waves of Time;
But be ye satisfied that you have light
Enough to take your step and find your foothold.

--T.S. Eliot
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Re: High Adventure

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Eliza P. Donner Houghton, The Expedition of the Donner Party and Its Tragic Fate

HTML: http://ia600300.us.archive.org/4/items/ ... 1146-h.htm
LibriVox audio: http://archive.org/details/expedition_d ... 7_librivox
Other formats: http://archive.org/details/donnerexpedition00hougrich
Out of the sunshine and shadows of sixty-eight years come these personal recollections of California—of the period when American civilization first crossed its mountain heights and entered its overland gateways.

I seem to hear the tread of many feet, the lowing of many herds, and know they are the re-echoing sounds of the sturdy pioneer home-seekers. Travel-stained and weary, yet triumphant and happy, most of them reach their various destinations, and their trying experiences and valorous deeds are quietly interwoven with the general history of the State.

Not so, however, the "Donner Party," of which my father was captain. Like fated trains of other epochs whose privations, sufferings, and self-sacrifices have added renown to colonization movements and served as danger signals to later wayfarers, that party began its journey with song of hope, and within the first milestone of the promised land ended it with a prayer for help. "Help for the helpless in the storms of the Sierra Nevada Mountains!"

And I, a child then, scarcely four years of age, was too young to do more than watch and suffer with other children the lesser privations of our snow-beleaguered camp; and with them survive, because the fathers and mothers hungered in order that the children might live.

Scenes of loving care and tenderness were emblazoned on my mind. Scenes of anguish, pain, and dire distress were branded on my brain during days, weeks, and months of famine,—famine which reduced the party from eighty-one souls to forty-five survivors, before the heroic relief men from the settlements could accomplish their mission of humanity.

Who better than survivors knew the heart-rending circumstances of life and death in those mountain camps? Yet who can wonder that tenderest recollections and keenest heartaches silenced their quivering lips for many years; and left opportunities for false and sensational details to be spread by morbid collectors of food for excitable brains, and for prolific historians who too readily accepted exaggerated and unauthentic versions as true statements?...
For archaeological excavations related to the Donner party, see here.
Be not too curious of Good and Evil;
Seek not to count the future waves of Time;
But be ye satisfied that you have light
Enough to take your step and find your foothold.

--T.S. Eliot
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Re: High Adventure

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Fernand Grenard, Tibet; the country and its inhabitants (1904)

http://archive.org/details/cu31924062697804
The following pages contain first the story of the journey, unfortunately attended with tragic results, which I performed with my regretted leader and friend, the late M. Dutreuil de Rhins, across an almost inaccessible region. If devoid of any other merit, this narrative has at least that of sincerity. I have been to no pains to embellish or in any way to distort it, nor have I ever endeavoured to astonish the reader's imagination by displaying things through magnifying-glasses or to flatter the prevailing taste for romantic exoticism which disguises the true character of countries and men under a conventional veneer. After drawing up in his journal a list of the sufferings and difficulties with which we had to cope, Dutreuil de Rhins wrote:
"We can never forget all these sufferings!"
Far from exaggerating them, however, I have rather extenuated them, knowing how greatly lie detested anything at all resembling advertisement and how bent he was upon not appearing to solicit the admiration or pity of others....
Ghulam Rassul Galwan, Servant of Sahibs (1924)

A Book to be Read Aloud
With an introduction by Sir Francis Younghusband

http://archive.org/details/ServantOfSahibs
Introduction

Why Himalayan peoples should be as ready as they are to undergo hardships, and run risks of the most serious nature, in the service of any stray traveller who appears among them is not easy to understand. The payment they receive is small. They have to work for much more than an eight hours' day. And they have no insurance against accidents. Yet they readily work through long and arduous days, and willingly risk their lives. And, most wonderful of all, they are full of gratitude to their employer when they leave his service.

In this book we get an answer to the puzzle. It is written by one of themselves -- by a Mohamedan of Ladak, who had worked for many years in the service of English and American travellers in the Himalaya, Central Asia and Tibet. The secret is that these men, the best of them, love adventure just as much as their employers. Written in faulty English, but with the instinct of a true artist, we see on every page the spirit which animated Rassul....
Ghulam Rassul Galwan's version of the events befalling Dutreuil de Rhins and Grenard is at pp. 138-142.
Be not too curious of Good and Evil;
Seek not to count the future waves of Time;
But be ye satisfied that you have light
Enough to take your step and find your foothold.

--T.S. Eliot
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Samuel Kneeland, An American in Iceland (1876)

an account of its scenery, people and history; with a description of its millennial celebration in August, 1874; with notes on the Orkney, Shetland, and Faroe islands, and the great eruption of 1875.

http://archive.org/details/americaninicelan00kneerich
I had the satisfaction during the summer of 1874 of visiting Iceland, on the occasion of its celebration of the thousandth anniversary of its settlement by Norwegian rovers. I was led to this distant, and supposed cold and cheerless, region by several motives, prominent among which were: i. The desire of comparing its volcanic phenomena, exhibiting the singular paradox of extensive glaciers and eruptions of fiery lava and boiling geysers in close proximity, with those of the Sandwich Islands, which I had visited in 1872. Having gazed into the horrible cauldron of the "Lake of Fire;" having witnessed the magnificent spectacle of Mauna Loa and Mauna Kea, fourteen thousand feet high; having toiled to the top of Haleakala, ten thousand feet, and stood within its extinct crater, twenty-seven miles in circumference, — I longed to see Mount Hecla, which conceals under its mantle of perpetual snow volcanic fires which have many times spread desolation for several miles around its base. 2. The hope of collecting specimens of natural history from this isolated region ; and 3. The desire of seeing its curious and remarkable people, enjoying the rare celebration of the thousandth birthday of their country....
Be not too curious of Good and Evil;
Seek not to count the future waves of Time;
But be ye satisfied that you have light
Enough to take your step and find your foothold.

--T.S. Eliot
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National Geographic Live!:

Cradle of Gold: The Story of Hiram Bingham and Machu Picchu

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Historian Christopher Heaney relates the story of Hiram Bingham, who stepped into the astounding ruins of Machu Picchu, the lost city of the Incas, 100 years ago.
Be not too curious of Good and Evil;
Seek not to count the future waves of Time;
But be ye satisfied that you have light
Enough to take your step and find your foothold.

--T.S. Eliot
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