The Art of Travel (1872) | Hacker News Reader

The Art of Travel (1872)

gutenberg.org

41 pointspmoriarty12 comments

Travel must have been a much bigger deal 100 years ago. You could not get shots for the area you're going. It would be so slow. On the other hand, with fewer travelers there wouldn't be areas over run by tourists.

You can still go to very inaccessible areas that have little to no tourists. Much of Canada is wilderness for one to dig a hole to put a roof over and fell trees with one of your sharpened soft axe.

If you want a warmer clime you could venture up the Amazon river into the forests and fend off Jaguars with your rifle loaded with bullets made in your bullet mold.

Australia is pretty much empty too.

You can still roam wild places in the Steppes of Mongolia, wonder for weeks in search of Shangri-La in the Himalayas without seeing anyone. There are many, many places you can go travelling in the wilds.

Point being, there is a difference between touring and the kind of adventure travel the author is talking about. Both touring and adventuring style of travel existed in the 1800s and today. You can still do it! But I agree, it is relatively easier to get to places, and medically one can be much more prepared for disease and infection. That said, it is surprising how quickly you might need to revert to the practices described in The Art of Travel once you are outside of modern life. It's still the stone age when you are on your own, injured, and in the middle of no where.

> You can still roam wild places in the Steppes of Mongolia, wonder for weeks in search of Shangri-La in the Himalayas without seeing anyone.

But others will see you. I traveled through Mongolia with some locals, and one of the things that was striking to me is how few people were there. At some point, I mentioned this, and was laughed at by the locals. They were surprised that I thought it was empty when there were plenty of people around. They pointed out someone on a horse on a hill several ranges over. They said that if we got closer they would make sure to stop us to ask why we were there. There were also gers far away in other ranges. And everyone knew where everyone else was. It was like their personal bubbles had a 2 km radius

>You can still go to very inaccessible areas that have little to no tourists. Much of Canada is wilderness for one to dig a hole to put a roof over and fell trees with one of your sharpened soft axe.

Yes, but 100 years ago even large cities had little to no tourists. Not Paris or Rome, but tons of other places that are now filled to the brims with tourists...

The author: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Francis_Galton

A very complicated, fascinating man. On the one hand, statistics owes a lot to this man. On the other hand, he was the man who popularized eugenics.

Having just briefly skimmed the article, I suspect he would have been horrified at how things developed on that front throughout the 20th century. He very specifically railed against "the nonsensical sentiment of the present day, that goes under that name [pride of race]".

I fear he would have a lot in common with the far-right, populist parties in present day Europe though. In the same paragraph that contains your quote, you also find this:

"Where the weak could find a welcome and a refuge in celibate monasteries or sisterhoods, and lastly, where the better sort of emigrants and refugees from other lands were invited and welcomed, and their descendants naturalised."

Judged with our modern standard, most of people who lived more than 100 years before are barbarians/far right/populists/whatever else you want to call them.

Guess how we will be judged in 100 year from now?

That doesn't really sound far-right or populist to me: he was in favour of immigration, and naturalising the descendants of immigrants, which was a particularly progressive idea back when nationality and ethnicity were so tightly bound together.

Of course, the neat categories of the present don't really apply to the messy past, nor will the neat categories of the future apply to the messy present.

Francis Galton was Darwin's cousin. Reading the Origin of Species he became convinced of evolution. He believed that “what Nature does blindly, slowly, and ruthlessly, man may do providently, quickly, and kindly.” He was also into statistics and measurement. There is an interesting story of him measuring an African (Khoikhoi) women's impressive derriere without touching her using a sextant from a distance. Women’s beauty consumed him. One of his experiments was to find which place has more beautiful women. Sorta like a 19th century HotORNot. He had two counters in each pocket, one for hot and one for nots. According to his study London had the most attractive women in the UK, Aberdeen the least.

https://sangerpapers.wordpress.com/tag/francis-galton/

https://heterogenoustasks.wordpress.com/2015/09/26/footnote-...

https://socialecologies.wordpress.com/2017/05/30/eugenics-to...

Before Hitler, most of the "wise" men of science and progress in Europe and the US were in favor of eugenics.

If it wasn't for the Nazis, those kind of people (think "Californian Ideology") people would openly be in favor of them still...

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