Lake Forest: journey

Via BookBud I came across a Smithsonian book:  JOURNEY:  AN ILLUSTRATED HISTORY OF THE WORLD’S GREATEST TRAVELS.  Although it is not sufficiently up to date to include me, it is very interesting.  I am only about halfway through its more than 1100 pages, most of which are illustrations.  Covering migrations, trade, conquests, explorations, and finally tourism, from ancient times almost to the present, the descriptions of individuals and their travels are necessarily brief and incomplete.  I am surprised that they did not go back even farther to the first migration of some of our species from Africa, which is where the journey really begins.

Here are a few of the illustrations and words from the first half of the book.

The strikingly pure and beautiful hull above is a 9th Century Viking burial ship.

Marco Polo leaving Venice.

 

The Cantino Planisphere, completed in 1502, showing the world as known by the Portuguese after the voyage of Vasco de Gama.

The shipwreck of Vitus Bering’s ship on an uninhabited island 109 miles off Russia’s Kamchatka Peninsula on the return from his second voyage to what is now Alaska and the straits that bear his name.  Of the 77 survivors, 31 died during the winter, including Bering.  The 46 survivors eventually built a boat from the wreckage and reached the mainland.

The arrival of Captain Cook’s RESOLUTION and DISCOVERY at Kealakelua Bay, Hawaii, in 1779, where he was killed on February 14.

And some words.

Those who sail close to the shore never discover new lands.  —Andre Gide

Neither snow nor rain nor heat nor gloom of night stays these couriers from the swift completion of their appointed rounds.  —Herodotus, 440 B.C. (about a system of horsemen in the Persian Empire of Cyrus the Great, somewhat later adopted by the U.S. Postal Service.)

Unlike the mediocre, intrepid spirits seek victory over those things that seem impossible.  —Ferdinand Magellan

Do just once what others say you can’t do, and you will never pay attention to their limitations again.  —Captain James Cook

Ambition leads me not only to go farther than any man has been before me, but as far as I think it possible for man to go.  —Captain James Cook

And finally,