Have Mustache, Will Travel - The Public Domain Travels Of John L. Stoddard

Have Mustache, Will Travel – The Public Domain Travels Of John L. Stoddard

June 6th, 2010 · No Comments · Hidden Public Domain Treasures, Public Domain How-To

John Stoddard was born in Brookline, Massachusetts in 1850. In 1871 he graduated from Williams College, then on to two years of theology at Yale Divinity School. After that he taught Latin and French at Boston Latin School.

He began traveling around the world in 1874, and published Red-Letter Days Abroad in 1884. He turned his experiences into a series of popular lectures delivered throughout North America.

These lectures were periodically published in book form as John L. Stoddard’s Lectures and eventually numbered ten volumes and five supplements (1897-1898). The books include numerous illustrations derived from the immense catalog of photographs taken by Stoddard, and cover every subject, from art and architecture, to archeology and natural history.

These lectures (books) are published on many of the archives including:

http://www.archive.org/search.php?query=John%20L.%20Stoddard

The John L. Stoddard’s Lectures

v. 1 Norway. Switzerland. Athens. Venice.
v. 2 Constantinople. Jerusalem. Egypt.
v. 3 Japan (two lectures). China.
v. 4 India (two lectures). The Passion play.
v. 5 Paris. La belle France. Spain.
v. 6 Berlin. Vienna. St. Petersburg. Moscow.
v. 7 The Rhine. Belgium. Holland. Mexico.
v. 8 Florence. Naples. Rome.
v. 9 Scotland. England. London.
v. 10 Southern California. Grand Canyon of the Colorado River. Yellowstone National Park.

Supplementary volumes:

no. 1 Ireland (two lectures). Denmark. Sweden.
no. 2 Canada (two lectures). Malta. Gibraltar.
no. 3 South Tyrol. Around Lake Garda. The Dolomites.
no. 4 Sicily. Genoa. A drive through the Engadine.
no. 5 Lake Como. The upper Danube. Bohemia.

Sample Content From The Books:

japan-1 japan

“IT is now nearly four hundred years since the brave discoverer, Magellan, first sailed around the world. Yet, till comparatively recent times, three years were necessary to complete the circuit. Today, some Phineas Fogg can put a girdle round the earth in less than eighty days, and messages are flashed to us from China and Ceylon in less than eighty seconds. The old-time spirit of adventure amid unknown scenes, which thrilled the traveler of former years, has, therefore, well-nigh disappeared. Of all the surface of our globe, the Polar Seas alone still bid defiance to the approach of man; though every year the ultimate capitulation of those ice-bound areas, lit by the aurora, becomes less remote.

The broad Atlantic has now dwindled to an ocean ferry. Europe is measured, not by weeks, but by hours. Constantinople, once so remotely Oriental, is but five days from London,-Cairo only six.”

sicily sicily2

“THE site of Sicily foreshadowed, long before advent on our globe, the mighty part that it play in history. The Mediterranean had not the aspect which it bears to-day. Across its surface stretched two isthmuses, one of which severed it from the Atlantic, and joined Gibraltar with Morocco; the other, a thousand miles to the eastward, divided it into two great basins, and formed between them a gigantic causeway, eighty miles in length, connecting Sicily and Tunis.

Of this not only do geology and deep-sea soundings furnish ample proof, but the discovery in Sicily of many bones of extinct tropical animals shows that these creatures formerly made their way by land from Africa to southern Europe. A sinking of the earth-crust caused at last these two partitions to subside; and while the waves of the Atlantic rushed in through the opening now known as the Straits of Gibraltar, the waters of the two interior basins also met and mingled over the sunken ridge which had divided them.

Thus there appeared for the first time – although as yet unseen by any human eye – the noble spectacle of a united Mediterranean, linked at Gibraltar with the oceans of the outer world, and covering substantially the same area we have always known.”

california

california-2

“Nature has carefully guarded Southern California. Ten thousand miles of ocean roll between her western boundary and the nearest continent; while eastward, her divinity is hedged by dreary deserts that forbid approach. Although the arid plains of eastern Arizona are frequently called deserts, it is not till the west-bound tourist has passed Flagstaff that the word acquires a real and terrible significance. Then, during almost an entire day he journeys through a region which, while it fascinates, inspires him with dread. Occasionally a flock of goats suggests the possibility of sustaining life here, but sometimes for a distance of fifty miles he may see neither man nor beast.

The villages, if such they can be called, are merely clusters of rude huts dotting an area of rocky desolation. No trees are visible. No grazing-ground relieves the dismal monochrome of sand. The mountains stand forth dreary, gaunt, and naked.

In one locality the train runs through a series of gorges the sides of which are covered with disintegrated rock, heaped up in infinite confusion, as if an awful ague-fit had seized the hills, and shaken them until their ledges had been broken into a million boulders.

At another point, emerging from a maze of mountains, the locomotive shoots into a plain, forty or fifty miles square, and sentineled on every side by savage peaks. Once, doubtless, an enormous lake was held encompassed by these giants; but, taking advantage of some seismic agitation, it finally slipped through their fingers to the sea, and now men travel over its deserted bed.

Sometimes these monsters seemed to be closing in upon us, as if to thwart our exit and crush us in their stony arms; but the resistless steed that bore us onward, though quivering and panting with the effort, always contrived to find the narrow opening toward liberty.

Occasionally our route lay through enormous fields of cactus and yucca trees, twelve feet in height, and, usually, so hideous from their distorted shapes and prickly spikes, that I could understand the proverb, “Even the Devil cannot eat a cactus.”

Stoddard was a master at orally describing the areas of the world in which he travelled to such a degree that his audience would often remark that they felt like they had actually “been there” after hearing one of his lectures.

As you can see from the excerpts provided above, Stoddard’s masterful writing style conjures up breath-taking mental imagery of the particular locale he is describing ~ as you read, you just can’t help but feel like you are traveling right by his side.

Can you and John Stoddard co-write a series of travel guides together?

Two words ~ Why Not?