by Charles Darwin (1989)
I have stated in the preface to the first Edition of this work, and in the Zoology of the Voyage of the Beagle, that it was in consequence of a wish expressed by Captain Fitz Roy, of having some scientific person on board, accompanied by an offer from him of giving up part of his own accommodations, that I volunteered my services, which received, through the kindness of the hydrographer, Captain Beaufort, the sanction of the Lords of the Admiralty.
Sallie Hester
Presents excerpts from the diary of Sallie Hester, a teenager who traveled West on the Oregon Trail in a wagon train in the mid-1800s. This book presents excerpts from the diary of Sallie Hester, a teenager who traveled west on the Oregon Trail in a wagon train in the mid-1800s.
Baron Charles von Hügel
Baron Charles von Hugel was an Austrian diplomat, army officer and courtier, and was celebrated across Europe, during the mid-nineteenth century, for his magnificent gardens and his cultivation of exotic plants, including the fashionable 'New Holland plants'. In 1831 he set out from Europe on six years of travel to mend his broken heart. His betrothed, the Hungarian Countess Melanie Zichy-Ferraris had broken their engagement and become the third Princess Metternich. In the course of several years of travelling the world, he spent most of 1834 in the young Australian colonies of Swan River, Van Diemen's Land, Norfolk Island and New South Wales, observing the flora and collecting the seeds for his gardens. This is Hugel's journal of his travels on this continent. Translated into English for the first time and previously unpublished, it is an insightful record of the flora he found here and the people he met, interspersed with acute and generally unflattering commentaries on British administration, the transportation system, Sydney social life, missionary efforts, and the treatment of Aborigines. Apart from the romantic melancholy which occasionally colours Hugel's journal, his account of the colonies is unique, because he saw them from a perspective quite unlike that of most observers of the time. He was an Austrian aristocrat, a devout Catholic, a passionate supporter of the reactionary Hapsburg Empire and an intimate of the all-powerful Prince Metternich - no friend of the new 'democracies'. He hobnobbed with all the notables wherever he went, but also had many encounters - often described in comic dialogue - with convicts and ex-convicts, bushrangers, shanty-keepers, and common folk. An indefatigable traveller, on horseback and on foot, he also drove a gig over the primitive road over the Blue Mountains, and far and wide in the interior. Back in Europe, Hugel's descriptions of the vegetation of this 'great southern land mass' were to inspire Ferdinand von Mueller, later to become director of the Melbourne Botanic Gardens. Hugel's botanical influence is still evident also in a number of Australian plant names, such as Acacia huegelii and Hardenbergia, which was named after his sister, Countess von Hardenberg.
Bernal Díaz del Castillo
A follower of Hernando Cortez describes how a small group of Spaniards was able to defeat the mighty Aztecs and lay claim to their territory and treasures for Spain.
Gertrude Bell
**From Goodreads:** A seeming contradiction, Gertrude Bell was both a proper Victorian and an intrepid explorer of the Arabian wilderness. She was a close friend of T. E. Lawrence, and played an important role in creating the modern map of the Middle East after World War I. The Desert and the Sown is a chronicle, illustrated by over 160 photos, of Bell's 1905 journey from Jericho to Antioch, a land of warring tribes under Turkish control.