Monday 13 April 2020

BOOK REVIEW - Adventures in the Great Forests




Well, I enjoyed this book very much. It is over a hundred years old and is talking about events going back 150 years before that. Unavoidably it is very dated and some modern readers might be put off by some of the attitudes reflected here.

For instance wanting to shoot wild animals is considered a perfectly valid reason to travel through remote forests. That said, these accounts are straight from people who went to wild places while they were still in their pristine state so they reflect very much what they were like.

It also includes accounts of travellers encounters with the locals. Most of these are fairly straightforward, though they do show just how difficult travel was and how remote placed could be before modern roads or railways came through. Some are inadvertently amusing - such as the time when a pair of Brits entered a Caucasus village where they did not speak a word of the local language. They found what they thought was an inn of some kind and entered trying to buy some food and drink. Clearly there was some kind of massive misunderstanding and our travellers had to leave hurriedly when it became obvious that they had caused offence. Reading it a second time I wondered if they had walked in on a wedding or family party of some kind, not an inn at all.

As with so many of these old books, it is absolutely fascinating but you do need to read it with an open mind and an appreciation of the attitudes of the time.

If you see a copy in a second hand bookshop some time, it worth a few pennies of your money.

No comments:

Post a Comment