Classic Travel Tales

07/11/2025

“Before we laid ourselves down to sleep, the elder Tahitian fell on his knees, and with closed eyes repeated a long prayer in his native tongue.”

"Before we laid ourselves down to sleep, the elder Tahitian fell on his knees, and with closed eyes repeated a long prayer in his native tongue."

27/09/2025

"The waiter smiled and bowed and translated. I knew he would, and that is why I said it all. Then the little man’s pride melted away, and a smile replaced the frown on his face."

20/09/2025

"There was but one vehicle at the station, a shabby, creaking, mud-plastered sort of coach, into which I bundled together with two travellers."

13/09/2025

“Black, black was the night after the firelit kitchen; but what was that to the blackness in our heart? This was not the first time that I have been refused a lodging.”

In 1876 Robert Louis Stevenson and a friend canoed through Belgium and France, staying in inns in villages along the way.

06/09/2025

"Time could not have dragged with such wonderful seascapes and cloudscapes—dawns that were like burning imperial cities under rainbows that arched nearly to the zenith."

30/08/2025

“Never did a mountain seem so close; its big sides seemed at one’s very elbow, and its majestic dome, and the lofty cluster of slender minarets that were its neighbors, seemed to be almost over one’s head.”

"Never did a mountain seem so close; its big sides seemed at one’s very elbow, and its majestic dome ... seemed to be almost over one’s head."

04/08/2025

Taking you to another place, another time. Click to read Classic Travel Tales, a Substack publication.

31/07/2025

𝘈 𝘝𝘪𝘦𝘸 𝘰𝘧 𝘵𝘩𝘦 𝘔𝘰𝘶𝘯𝘵𝘢𝘪𝘯 𝘗𝘢𝘴𝘴 𝘊𝘢𝘭𝘭𝘦𝘥 𝘵𝘩𝘦 𝘕𝘰𝘵𝘤𝘩 𝘰𝘧 𝘵𝘩𝘦 𝘞𝘩𝘪𝘵𝘦 𝘔𝘰𝘶𝘯𝘵𝘢𝘪𝘯𝘴 (𝘊𝘳𝘢𝘸𝘧𝘰𝘳𝘥 𝘕𝘰𝘵𝘤𝘩) by Thomas Cole, 1839, National Gallery of Art, public domain

From the National Gallery of Art: Crawford Notch, a deep valley in New Hampshire’s White Mountains, gained notoriety in 1826 when nine lives were lost in a catastrophic avalanche nearby. Cole’s painting depicts the site of an earlier landslide whose destruction prompted the victims—Mr. and Mrs. Samuel Willey and their five children, along with two farmhands—to immediately leave their home in Crawford Notch and construct what they thought would be a safe haven close by. Instead, they ran into the very path of disaster—the next night’s avalanche struck their temporary refuge. A rescue party arriving the next day searched feverishly for the family. The bodies of Mr. and Mrs. Willey, two children, and the farmhands were eventually located, but no trace of the other three children was ever found.

𝘊𝘳𝘢𝘸𝘧𝘰𝘳𝘥 𝘕𝘰𝘵𝘤𝘩 is thought to allude to this dramatic and tragic episode as emblematic of man’s frailty in the face of the vast and unpredictable forces of nature—a theme Cole often explored in his landscapes. Amid this seemingly idyllic autumnal setting, the painting’s diminutive human figures appear oblivious to the possibility of tragedy. A man on a black horse rides along a path zig-zagging through the picture space; two figures and a dog stand outside the well-known Notch House Inn, and in the distance a stagecoach is about to pass through the notch. Yet evidence of nature’s destructive potential is everywhere apparent: the twisted trees of the foreground, the skeletal, gesturing dead trees of the middle distance, the V-shape form of the notch (seemingly riven by some supernatural process), and the dark, sweeping storm clouds at the upper left.

For Cole, ever fascinated by the multiplicity of meanings embedded in landscape, Crawford Notch was a subject rich with possibilities: a family’s harrowing misfortune, the power of natural forces, the passing of time. In Crawford Notch the artist successfully integrated these various threads of content into a richly textured whole. At once vibrant, vital, and beautiful, the painting is also provocatively expressive of instability, change, and uncertainty.

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30/07/2025

𝘛𝘩𝘦 𝘔𝘦𝘹𝘪𝘤𝘢𝘯 𝘔𝘢𝘫𝘰𝘳 by Frederic Re*****on, 1889, Art Institute of Chicago, public domain

From the Art Institute of Chicago: Frederic Re*****on was greatly impressed by the Mexican army, which he observed during a six-week visit to Mexico in 1889 in preparation for an article in 𝘏𝘢𝘳𝘱𝘦𝘳’𝘴 𝘞𝘦𝘦𝘬𝘭𝘺 magazine. 𝘛𝘩𝘦 𝘔𝘦𝘹𝘪𝘤𝘢𝘯 𝘔𝘢𝘫𝘰𝘳 is an elaborate, multifigural composition, designed to convey the professionalism, discipline, and “immensely picturesque” appearance of the officer and his regiment. Re*****on enjoyed the soldiers’ ornate costumes, and he emphasized these through the use of rhythmic, flashing colors and the depiction of brilliant light. The line of horsemen stretches off into the far distance—a sign of honor, strength, and dignity.

Classic Travel Tales: https://lamulnix.com

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29/07/2025

𝘛𝘩𝘦 𝘊𝘳𝘺𝘴𝘵𝘢𝘭 𝘗𝘢𝘭𝘢𝘤𝘦 by Camille Pissarro, 1871, Art Institute of Chicago, public domain

From the Art Institute of Chicago: Camille Pissarro and his family left France in 1870–71 to escape the Prussian invasion and subsequent civil uprising (known as the Commune). They spent these years in Lower Norwood, outside London. In the neighboring town of Sydenham, Pissarro painted the glass-and-iron Crystal Palace, which was originally designed by Joseph Paxton in 1851 for London’s Hyde Park. Although it was immediately acclaimed for its modern architecture, only two years later the building was dismantled and reassembled in Sydenham. (It was destroyed by fire in 1936.) In this small oil painting, Pissarro relegated what was considered the world’s largest building to the left side of the canvas, as if to give equal space to the “modern-life” scene of families and carriages parading by Sydenham’s more recently constructed middle-class homes.

Classic Travel Tales: https://lamulnix.com

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28/07/2025

"If the barber were fanatically disposed, he might think that it would be doing a good deed ... to cut the throat of the unbeliever."

27/07/2025

“He had a whole heaven and horizon to himself, and the sun seemed to be journeying over his clearing only the livelong day. Here we concluded to spend the night, and wait for the Indians, as there was no stopping-place so convenient above.”

In 1846 Henry David Thoreau made the first of three trips into the Maine wilderness, this with the aim to climb Ktaadn (today known as Mount Katahdin), Maine’s highest peak.