Modern Travel
An Anthology

MODERN TRAVEL - AN ANTHOLOGY BY FREDERICK T. WOOD PREFACE THE field of modern travel literature is a wide one. In the period between the two wars over 8750 travel books were published in Great Britain, an average of more than four hundred each year, to say nothing of reprints or new edftions of older works. All are not of equal value as contributions either to letters or to the subject with which they profess to deal. In assem bling the present collection an endeavour has been made to choose extracts which seemed to have some claim to literary merit as well as a narrative or descriptive interest. Each passage is of a substantial lengthan obvious advantage for a series such as this,many different countries are represented, while the means of travel are as varied and diverse as the customs and the scenery. There are journeys on foot, by motor car, by train, by sea, by gondola, by air, and even by the Afghan tonga. The general plan of the book has limited the selection to a comparatively few authors and some dozen extracts, so that exclusion is not to be regarded as criticism: one wellknown writer, who otherwise would certainly have found a place, has been excluded at his own wish. All the works drawn upon are easily accessible, and it is to be hoped that sufficient interest will be awakened to induce the student to read at least some of them in their entirety. F. T. W. SHEFFIELDAugust 1944 CONTENTS Tramping in America from The Autobiography of a Super Tramp, by W. H. Davies To the West Riding from English Journey, by J. B.Priestley The Last Fling from Brazilian Adventure, by Peter Fleming Venice from The Donkey of God, by Louis Untermeyer The Nomads Road to Kabul from Forbidden Road Kabul to Samarkand, by Rosita Forbes High Days and Holidays in the Soviet Union from Worked in a Soviet Factory, by Peter Francis TransSiberian Express from Ones Company, by Peter Fleming Chang and the Chinese from Escape with Me by Sir Osbert Sitwell Nazareth from A Pagans Pilgrimage, by Llewelyn Powys Leviathan from South Latitude, by F. D. Ommaney To the Barrier from South Latitude, by F. D. Ommaney By Air to Tibet from First Russia, Then Tibet, by Robert Byron Notes Exercises