Showing results by publisher "MuseumAudiobooks.com" in Travel & Tourism

Mark Twain’s Following the Equator: A Journey Around the World is the account of a lecture tour in which he circumnavigated the globe on a steamship. He undertook a tour of the British Empire in 1895 at age 60 with stops at the Hawaiian Islands, Australia, Fiji Islands, New Zealand, India and South Africa. The result is a wide range of observations, along with perceptive discussions and descriptions of cultures, customs, people, climate, flora and fauna, religion, politics, food, and many other matters.

Ostensibly written by an English knight, The Book of Marvels and Travels claim to recount his experiences in Egypt, the Levant, India, and China. It describes a journey from Europe to Jerusalem and further into Asia, and the many weird and wonderful peoples and practices of the East. The author claims to have traveled in land populated by Amazons, dog-headed people, cannibals, one-footed tribes, and Pygmies.

Washington Irving (1783-1859) was a short-story writer, essayist, biographer, historian, and diplomat. The short story "The Devil and Tom Walker" is about a miserly man who makes a deal with the devil. Irving’s fictional character Diedrich Knickerbocker is a Dutch-American historian and narrator of "The Conspiracy of the Cocked Hats" and the “golden age” of Wouter van Twiller, the Dutch Governor of New Amsterdam.

Around the World in Seventy-Two Days, the 1890 book by Nellie Bly, chronicles her sensational 72-day trip around the world for the tabloid newspaper, New York World. On November 14, 1889, she boarded the steamer Augusta Victoria on her journey of 23,899 miles with the goal of finishing in 75 days. Her journey took her through England, France, Italy, the Suez Canal, Sri Lanka, Singapore, Hong Kong and Japan to San Francisco where she boarded a private chartered train which brought her to New York on January 25, 1890, 72 days and six hours after leaving.

Fanny Kelly (1845-1904) was a North American pioneer captured by the Sioux and held captive for five months. Her ill-fated party was attacked by chief Ottawa on the Oregon Trail. She escaped when Sihasapa people took her to Fort Sully.

Pigafetta's book on Magellan’s travels is an engaging travel narrative honoring the legendary explorer. But it is much more: an accurate ethnographic and geographical account of the circumnavigation of the globe. Pifagetta describes the peoples, countries, goods, and even the languages that were spoken in every area.

Frederick Courteney Selous (1851-1917) was a British explorer, hunter, and conservationist. In this work, The Lion in South Africa, he describes his numerous encounters with wild lions and notes that as far back as the 1890s, lion numbers were shrinking from overhunting.

Robert Louis Stevenson was a Scottish novelist, poet, composer, essayist, and adventure writer. "The Silverado Squatters" is a travelogue of his honeymoon in the Napa Valley. "Travels with a Donkey in the Cévennes" (1879), one of his earliest published works, is considered a milestone of outdoor literature. The short story "A Lodging for the Night" (1877) was Stevenson's first published fiction, at the age of 27, while Kidnapped (1886) is an historical novel set in 18th-century Scotland, about the Appin Murder.

The life story of Billy Dixon, a buffalo hunter and scout from the Texas Panhandle who was active as far as Colorado, Kansas and Oklahoma, offers a genuine depiction of life on the old western frontier. Billy helped found the town of Adobe Walls, ended a siege during the Second Battle of Adobe Walls with a long-distance shot, and received the US Medal of Honor for his bravery at the Buffalo Wallow Fight. Billy later served as postmaster at Adobe Walls, sheriff of Hutchinson County, Texas, and state land commissioner. 

Fifty Years on the Trail is the true story of John Young Nelson (1826-1903), an early frontiersman, military scout, interpreter, guide, and saloon owner. Nelson ran away from home as a young teenager to adventure in the west. He worked on farms, served as a cabin boy on a Mississippi steamer, and became an apprentice with a group of traders traveling west from Missouri. After meeting a band of Sioux, he got himself adopted into the tribe, learned how to live off the land and became a Sioux warrior.

Warpath and Bivouac, or the Conquest of the Sioux offers a picture of campaigning in the 1870s and records the sights and sounds of plains warfare. This campaign was the one in which General Custer suffered his famous defeat at the Little Big Horn. Finerty gives an account of the Battle of the Rosebud which preceded the Custer massacre, and also reports on the later 1879 campaign to force the surrender of Sitting Bull and his Sioux who were the last resistance after Custer's defeat.

Thoreau gives an account of three canoe and hiking journeys - by himself and with others - through the mostly uninhabited forests of Maine in the 1850s. Identifying birds, trees and plants by their botanical as well as their common names, he also records the Indian names of lakes, rivers and plants. He investigates the connections between waterways and trails, and provides detail on camping, fishing and hunting in the woods, using whatever is at hand. Extolling the beauty of the wilds that he encounters, Thorough’s narrative is also imbued with elements of his philosophy.

Two Years Before the Mast is an 1840 memoir by the author Richard Henry Dana. A Harvard graduate, he spent the years 1834 to 1836 as a sailor on a merchant ship on a voyage from Boston to California. The journey took them past Cape Horn on the Tierra del Fuego archipelago where the Pacific and Atlantic oceans meet. Dana provides detailed descriptions of ship life and the technical aspects of sailing. A chapter on California and its inhabitants offers valuable historical insights on the state which was then a foreign land.

John Muir (1838 -1914) was an influential Scottish-American naturalist, author, environmental philosopher, and early advocate for the preservation of wilderness areas in the United States. In the late 1800s, Muir made several trips to the relatively unexplored territory of Alaska. Travels in Alaska, originally published in 1915, describes the beauty of the Alaskan wilderness and its inhabitants as observed during his travels between 1879 and 1890. In poetic prose, he describes the area’s magnificent glaciers and its animals like bears, bald eagles, wolves and whales.

First published in 1907, My Life as an Indian is the memoir of James Willard Schultz and tells the story of his first year living with the Pikuni tribe in Montana. It includes accounts of religious customs and ceremonies, hunting, raids, food preparation, child-rearing and more, and is thus of great interest to anthropologists and students of Native American history.

Our National Parks by John Muir is a brilliant guide and introduction to Yosemite and several other magnificent parks by the man who helped to create them through his advocacy for the preservation of wilderness areas. The author provides detailed observations of the animals, birds, glaciers, streams, fountains, sights, scents, and sounds of Yosemite, Yellowstone, Mount Rainier, Sequoia, and other forest reservations of the West.

Travels with a Donkey in the Cévennes (1879), a pioneering classic of outdoor literature, is one of Robert Louis Stevenson's earliest published works. It gives an account of his 12 day, 200 kilometer hiking journey through the sparsely populated areas of the Cévennes mountains in south-central France. The Cévennes was the site of a Protestant rebellion around 1702, which was severely suppressed by Louis XIV. Stevenson was well-versed in the history and evokes scenes from the rebellion as he passes through the area of the rebellion during the final days of his trek.

The Land of Little Rain by Mary Hunter Austin, first published in 1903, contains a series of interrelated essays about the American Southwest. A theme of environmental conservation and a philosophy of regional culture loosely link the narratives. The first essay covers the "Country of Lost Borders," an area between Death Valley and the High Sierras. In "Water Trails of the Ceriso", the author describes the many animals that travel along the trails, including coyotes and quails. "The Scavengers" deals with carrion feeders like buzzards and crows.  

Mary Barber was born in Massachusetts and married Sioux chief Squatting Bear in 1867. In her memoirs, she described her experiences with the Sioux and the many relations of Squatting Bear.

"The Autobiography of a Super-Tramp" was published in 1908 by the Welsh author W. H. Davies (1871-1940). Most of the narrative describes the way of life of the tramp in Britain and North America in the last decade of the 19th century. At the age of 22, Davies sailed to America, which was the first of more than a dozen Atlantic crossings. From 1893 to 1899 the author traveled the highways and railways, living day to day by riding trains, staying in prisons, and even managing to fund himself to repeatedly cross the ocean.