By Kristi Banker, Dramaturgy Intern

For enterprising Victorians, the world appeared an expanse of boundless possibilities. Theirs was an age of optimism and achievement, in which ingenious technology united once-isolated communities and provided the average citizen with transportation not only across England, but to the far corners of the earth. Regions beyond the British Isles that had once been impossibly distant, accessible only to die-hard explorers, suddenly became open ground for popular exploration; that is, for travel.

It was the birth of steam power that facilitated this development. The first steam-driven trains might have been noisy and unsteady, but improved designs soon allowed people to take cross-country day trips and visit relations in far-flung reaches of Britain. Railways also began to flourish in foreign nations, as the British expanded their influence and Empire (and elsewhere, countries such as the U.S. constructed their own rail lines). Meanwhile, increasingly efficient steamships provided passage from one continent to the next. Swifter than the massive sailing vessels, these steamers also offered luxurious cabins that invited casual travelers to cross the sea in style.

Now any British man or woman (for many women did undertake bold journeys) who had relished the adventures of such renowned explorers as David Livingstone and Richard Burton could experience the wilds of South Africa, perhaps even stop off in San Francisco and catch a train through the untamed West. Why, it was only a steamship ride away and, just like that, extraordinary worlds waited at one’s fingertips. Just like that, it was possible to sip tea on a terrace in Bombay or Yokohama.

Of course, not every traveler was content to remain on the terrace. Close at hand crouched the jungle in all its exquisite mystique, and amateur exploration was ever a popular option. Just as they had pushed outward from their homeland, intrepid Victorians set forth from bustling cities to view the mysteries of the unknown first-hand. It was a not unmanageable matter to engage native guides and a few beasts of burden, then to trek onward and glimpse anything from tigers to temples.

All of this adventure led to a flurry of travel writing, as eager Livingstones-to-be scrambled to record their own sights and experiences. Each venture was unique, each encounter guaranteed to capture the imagination, and travel writers sought to share every detail with eager ears back home. Today, their accounts give exciting and invaluable illustrations of the scenes encountered, offering first-hand impressions (colored, of course, by a particularly British sensibility) from the farthest reaches of the Empire and beyond. To glimpse the distant localities encountered in 80 Days, peruse at your leisure the following selections from Victorian travel journals.

“Outside there are some lovely country roads and lanes, which seem to present endless points of attraction. They are fringed with feathery bamboos and beautiful flowering shrubs; their margins are carpeted with verdure and wild flowers; the very ditches are beds of loveliness, where you find a wealth of jungle treasure: but then these drives lack the gaiety and the fashion and the fun.
“…It is all strangely, deeply interesting; and I never weary of watching the quaint scenes, and all the fantastic novelties, with which pure native life abounds.”
—In India, Mrs. Murray Mitchell (1876)

“At Yokohama the water seemed alive with picturesque animation. Here we saw for the first time the wondrous forms of junks, which never ceased to astonish me. [...]
“The huge native town was seen covering the flat ground on our right; the foreign settlement, with its handsome houses built in European fashion and often ornamented with gardens; the luxurious abodes of wealthy merchants, and the white Consulates gay with the flags of all nations, occupied the front; while on the left were the green slopes of the 'Bluff,' coming down to the edge of the sea, studded with bright houses, beloved of Foreign Ministers and all who are fortunate enough to live there, and crowned with groves of trees in every shade of brilliant verdure mingling with the sombre shade and graceful forms of the firs and cedars for which Japan is justly famed. All around us was a gay scene, and an inviting prospect for the wanderers from the great Pacific.”
—Over the Sea and Far Away, Thomas Woodbine Hinchliff (1876)

“I found myself transported two thousand years back in ancient Rome or glorious Carthage. This illusion is helped no doubt by the coloured dresses and graceful drapery of the Chinese, and by the somewhat classical style of the white houses, with their porticoes and colonnades and balconies sparkling under the intensely brilliant sunshine, outlined sharply against the almost purple sky.”
—My Reminiscences, Lord Ronald Gower (1878)

“The conductor called out for the loan of a pistol to enable him to put [a mangled cow] out of its misery. In an instant almost from every window on that side of the train a hand was extended offering the desired instrument. On my making some observations on the number of pistols that were forthcoming ready-loaded at a moment’s notice, the gentleman seated next to me replied that it was quite possible that I was the only man unarmed on the train; in consequence of the frequent robberies no one ever thought of moving without his six-shooter.”
—Last Winter in the United States, F. Barham Zincke (1868)

“Not a square acre escapes your observation if you ascend the Nile to Khartoum, and sail along its delta branches to Alexandria, Rosetta and Damietta. You find its domestic life, its manufactures and agriculture; and, as the land knows neither rain nor snow, these are strikingly manifested in the streets and fields. You have at once the modern and the ancient, the fruitful and the barren, and the opportunity of examining the only harmless people who still retain the customs and manners of 3,000 years ago. The book is before you. You have only to read the first page at Alexandria, and turn over leaf after leaf as you linger by the cities of Cairo, Minieh, Roda, Thebes, Esna and Assouan, finding its printed chapters in magnificent ruins and thriving industries. This is what makes the Nile travel so desirable. Amid luxury and fine companions, you can leisurely examine all that the land contains, within a few hundred yards of your "dahabeah," and there is no uncertainty about the temples.”
—Four Thousand Miles of African Travel, Alvan S. Southworth (1875)

“Strangers coming to live there are warned by physicians not to walk to their houses by the steepest way. There are many instances of heart disease in San Francisco, brought on by walking too perpetually up and down steep places. Many of the houses on these highest seaward streets are handsome, and have pleasant grounds about them. […] And, going only a few steps further seaward, you come to or you look down on crowded lanes, of dingy, tumbling, forlorn buildings, which seem as if they must be for ever slipping into the water. As you look up at the city from the harbor, this is the most noticeable thing. The hills rise so sharply and the houses are set on them at such incredible angles that it wouldn't surprise you, any day when you are watching it, to see the city slide down whole streets at a time.”
—Bits of Travel at Home, Helen Hunt Jackson (1878, Boston)

“The drive from the landing-stage had afforded us a glimpse of the vicinity of Bombay, comprising a series of diverging roads having on either side the pretty bungalows or handsome villas of the European and native gentry. These dwellings extend for several miles round the city, standing for the most part in enclosures of variable though generally limited extent. Some are encircled with high walls, while all are surrounded by a luxuriance of trees and plants, among which the date and cocoa-nut palms abound. The enormous spread of gigantic leaves, both here and in the country beyond, constituted to us the chief novelty of the landscape, growing as these were, not under glass as we had been accustomed to see tropical foliage at home, but luxuriantly in the open air.
…
It was naturally with a strong feeling of expectancy that I accompanied my friend next morning to his place of business in the city there to witness and mingle with what I had always understood to be the most stirring nucleus of life in India. And stirring indeed it was. The hot dusty streets were thronged with a multitude including nearly all the known characters of an eastern crowd, together with the different conveyances common to the place—carts and waggons, hackries, with patient bullocks in front and bawling drivers behind, passenger-cabs, buggies, and palanquins, shortly styled 'palkies.'”
—England to Delhi, John Matheson (1870)

If your curiosity has been sparked, browse the full text of the journals above, or take a look into the following examples, all available in full, online:

Around the World: Sketches of Travel Through Many Lands and Over Many Seas, E.D.G. Prime (1874)

Hittell’s hand-book of Pacific Coast Travel, John S. Hittell (1885)

Incidents of Travel in Egypt, Arabia Petræa, and the Holy Land, John L. Stephens (1871)

Life and Travel in Tartary, Thibet, and China: Being a Narrative of the Abbe Huc’s Travels in the Far East, M. Jones (1885)

Notes of Travel in South Africa, Charles John Andersson (1875)

William H. Seward’s Travels Around the World, Olive Risley Seward, ed. (1873)