Page:The Harvard Classics Vol. 51; Lectures.djvu/414

404 flame of ideal science, although for many this may indeed have burned with pale but steady glow; for them, perhaps as much as for any men, it was the fiercer flame which burns in the hearts of all true explorers, for whom the doing is more than the deed, who go because in very truth they must.

Such a hasty glance at the history of travel from earliest times can do little more than suggest the vastness and the interest of the field. In so wide a prospect only the larger features of the landscape can be seen, and if we have, so to speak, had only glimpses of the higher mountain peaks, it does not follow that there is less of interest in the valleys that nestle at their feet. We have of necessity considered only the great travelers, the great journeys, but those more humble and of lesser compass are not therefore to be despised. Of such more modest travelers, whose little journeys lay in narrower fields, there are a host; and from the best, with their intimate local knowledge, their keen and critical observations, their sympathetic descriptions, we may gain great pleasure and be stimulated perhaps to make all the use possible of the opportunities which come to us to see more thoroughly and with a more observing eye the country and the people round about.

METHODS OF TRAVEL

No one can read the records of the travelers of different periods without being struck by the differences in the character and method of travel which they reveal. Although reference to the comfort, the rapidity, and the safety of modern travel, at least along the great highways of the civilized world, is a commonplace, yet the contrast of the present conditions with those that formerly obtained is none the less noteworthy. The earlier travelers had frequently to go alone, sometimes disguise was their only hope, and they were, far more than at present, subject to hardship, suffering, and danger. They made, indeed were able to make, little in the way of special preparation for the journey; they carried with them little in the way of special outfit; and they traveled as a rule very slowly, often halting or being obliged to halt long on the way. Dependent for guidance frequently on the information of suspicious or unfriendly folk, they often went astray, and lacking regular or direct means of