Some Heroes of Travel

Complete and unabridged, with 60 full-page plates by Willem van de Velde the Younger, Willem van de Velde the Elder and Ludolf Bakhuizen. Travellers chosen for the difficulty of what they attempted: Marco Polo in Asia, Ruxton in Mexico and the Rockies, Barth in Central Africa, Atkinson in Siberia, Alexine Tinné in the Sudan, MacGahan on the Oxus, Burnaby on the ride to Khiva and Baker at the sources of the Nile. W. H. Davenport Adams compiled dozens of such books for young readers in the 1880s. He quotes the travellers' own journals at length, which is why the book has outlasted its purpose. Sixty plates after Turner and Friedrich widen the horizons of these journeys, from polar seas to desert light.