The Leg-Stretcher of Odcombe

Thomas Coryat

You would think that someone who was a popular Early Modern travel writer, and who also knew pretty much everybody who was anybody in his era--half Baedeker, half Zelig--and who was dubbed "The Odd," would be better remembered today. But such are the vagaries of history.

This week, let us pay tribute to this undeservedly obscure Englishman, one of the quirkier figures of a decidedly quirky era.

Thomas Coryat (or Coryate) was born circa 1577 in the Somerset town of Crewkerne, although he grew up in the village of Odcombe, where his father George Coryat was rector. The family was not wealthy, but George was able to see to it that his son got a good education at Winchester College and Oxford. After Thomas left the university, he found himself unable to decide what to do with his life. His class-conscious era offered few desirable opportunities for a young man who had more brains than he did money.

Coryat, like so many people in his situation, made use of his wits as best he could. He had enough "connections" to get himself a place in the court of James I's son Henry. Coryat was a gregarious, witty fellow with a gift of gab, so he managed to earn his keep by keeping his wealthy, important acquaintances amused. Prince Henry granted him ten pounds a year to act as his unofficial court jester. His contemporary Thomas Fuller wrote that "Sweetmeats and Coryate made up the last course of all court entertainments. Indeed, he was the courtiers' anvil to try their wits upon; and sometimes the anvil returned the hammers as hard knocks as it received, his bluntness repaying their abusiveness."

It was a comfortable enough job, but a demeaning one.  Like so many other comedians, Coryat wanted to be taken seriously. He cared little for mere money, but he longed for fame and, even more importantly, respect. Playing the fool for the entertainment of the nobility was no way to achieve either of those desires. He came up with a remarkable career plan. He would travel--alone--across Europe, then write a book about his adventures. Surely, then, he would win lasting acclaim?

Coryat set off on his journey in May 1608. His limited funds meant that he had to walk a good part of the way. (He proudly dubbed himself "The Oddcombe Legge-Stretcher.") In the course of nearly half a year, Coryat "leg-stretched" his way through France, Italy, Venice, Switzerland, Germany, and the Netherlands. Once back in England, he gave thanks for his safe return by donating his well-worn clothes and shoes to Odcombe Church, apparently with the thought that they should be venerated as relics. (The items, rather remarkably, remained on display until the 18th century.) In 1611, he recorded his achievement in a book, "Coryat's Crudities, hastily gobbled up in Five Months Travels in France, Italy, &c." His friend Ben Jonson arranged to have the work published, and also wrote a forward where he described Coryat as "an Engine, wholly consisting of extremes, a Head, Fingers, and Toes. For what his industrious Toes have trod, his ready Fingers have written, his subtle Head dictating." Coryat enlisted his other literary friends, such as John Donne and Inigo Jones, to write promotional verses (the 17th century equivalent of "blurbs") for the beginning of the book. He perhaps did not anticipate that his pals would gleefully take this as an opportunity to satirize and mock him. This literary celebrity roast proved so popular that a pirated reprint of the verses was published, omitting Coryat's material "for thine and thy purses good."

The imposing (over 200,000 words) "Crudities" is entirely characteristic of its author: Energetic, garrulous, amusing, eclectic, and slightly cracked. (It is the only book I know of to feature a frontispiece showing the author being pelted with eggs.) The streets of Paris "are the dirtiest, and so consequently the most stinking of all that ever I saw in any citie in my life." After describing a harrowing trip through the Alps, he noted that Aiguebelle featured many people with throat goitres, which he attributed to "the drinking of snow water." Savoy had beds so high "that a man could hardly gette into his bedde without some kind of climbing." Coryat deplored the Italian habit of sprinkling cheese over their food, "which I love not so well as the Welchmen doe." He did, however, appreciate one aspect of Italian dining: how they "doe alwaies at their meales use a little forke when they cut their meat...This forme of feeding I understand is generally used in all places of Italy, their forkes being for the most part made of yron or steele, and some of silver...The reason of this their curiosity is, because the Italian cannot by any means indure to have his dish touched with fingers, seeing all mens fingers are not alike cleane." Forks were not entirely unknown in England, but it took Coryat's promotion of their hygienic benefits to bring them into wider use.

Coryat also took note of another Italian innovation: "what they commonly call in the Italian tongue umbrellaes, that is, things that minister shadow unto them for shelter against the scorching heate of the Sunne. These are made of leather something answerable to the forme of a little canopy, & hooped in the inside with divers little wooden hoopes that extend the umbrella in a pretty large compasse." This is believed to be the earliest use of the word "umbrella" in English, although it would take about a century for the instruments to come into general use among Coryat's countrymen.

Venice fascinated him. It "yeeldeth the most glorious and heavenly shew upon the water that ever any mortal eye beheld." He described the architecture in astounding detail (often borrowed wholesale from earlier guide books.) Coryat earned the undying gratitude of music historians for his vivid descriptions of performances of the Venetian School, considered to be one of Europe's most well-known and influential musical movements.

On a less sublime note, he recorded the city's ubiquitous brothels, complaining that "if a stranger entereth into one of their Gondolas, and doth not presently tell them whither he will goe, they will incontinently carry him of their accord to a religious house [his sarcastic term for a bordello] forsooth, where his plumes shall be well pulled before he commeth forth againe." Coryat estimated that Venice had at least 20,000 prostitutes, "whereof many are esteemed so loose, that they are said to open their quivers to every arrow." He added his fear "least I shall expose my selfe to the severe censure and scandalous imputations of many carping Criticks, who I thinke will taxe me for luxury and wantonnesse to insert so lascivious a matter into this Treatise of Venice." Our Thomas knew that nothing sells books like a little sex.

Coryat followed up the success of "Crudities" with a sequel, "Coryats Crambe," a grab-bag of material consisting of some verses that had been submitted too late for inclusion in the previous book, petitions to Prince Henry and other members of the Royal Family, and the text of a speech Coryat made in the Court of Chancery. It too had a respectable sale, earning the author a decent amount of fame. Coryat became an accepted member of London's lively literary society, hobnobbing with (in the words of John Aubrey,) "all the witts then about the towne." John Hoskyns wrote a lengthy poem about this Jacobean Algonquin Round Table where Coryat ("This orator of Odcombe towne") was immortalized with lines such as,

But yet the number is not righted;
If Coriate bee not invited,
The jeast will want a tiller.
For wittily on him, they say,
As hammers on an anvil play,
Each man his jeast may breake.
When Coriate is fuddled well,
His tongue begins to talke pel-mel,
He shameth not to speake.

Hoskyns concluded his "tribute" by noting,

But Coriate liveth by his witts,
He looseth nothinge that he getts,
Nor playes the fool in vayne.

Coryat was still feeling restless and unfulfilled. His wanderlust urged him on to tackle even more exotic adventures. On October 20, 1612, he set out on another solo journey. He walked through Greece, the eastern Mediterranean, Turkey, Iraq, Iran, Afghanistan, and India. Coryat was one of the few Englishmen to tour the Ottoman Empire while it was still nearly at the height of its power and renown. He joined up with a caravan traveling through Palestine to Jerusalem. Coryat was utterly charmed by the region. His letters carry rapturous descriptions of monasteries with beautiful walled gardens, grand mosques with a thousand pillars, and cheap but excellent food. He called Damascus "an earthly paradise." In Jerusalem, Coryat piously had his arm tattooed with the arms of Jerusalem and the words "Via, Veritas, Vita" ["the Way, the Truth, the Life"] and visited the Temple of the Holy Sepulchre and other religious sites. By July 1615, he had arrived in India, where he was pleased to encounter a small group of Englishmen who were doing negotiations on behalf of the East India Company. He had been walking for some nine months, and was ready to take a rest in this little British enclave. The letters he sent home during this period were published in 1616 under the title of "Greetings from the Court of the Great Mogul." (A sequel appeared in 1618.)

Coryat made an appearance the court of the Emperor Jahangir in Ajmer. He presented a petition to Jahangir where he described himself as a "poore traveler and World-Seer," come to see "the blessed face of your Majesty," elephants, and the Ganges, presumably in that order. He asked the Emperor's permission to travel to Samarkand. Jahangir replied that his hostile relations with the Tartars made it impossible to help Coryat make the journey, but he did give the traveler a small sum of money. Coryat was grateful for this donation, as "I had but twentie shillings sterling left in my Purse."

Coryat visited Agra, which was then a great trading city. He observed religious festivals (as a devout Protestant, he did not really approve of any of them,) and toured grand tombs and exotic holy sites.

However, Coryat was tired. The strain of months of foot travel through largely inhospitable lands was finally taking its toll. He confided to an Englishman of his acquaintance that as he usually traveled alone, he feared he might die and "be buried in obscurity and none of his friends ever know what became of him."

In November 1617, Coryat made his way to Surat, popular as both a trade city and a port of embarkation for Mecca pilgrimages. It was his final journey. According to Edward Terry, an East India Company chaplain who had befriended the wanderer, Coryat's end was characteristically serio-comic: "He lived to come safely thither, but there being over-kindly used by some of the English, who gave him sack which they had brought from England; he calling for it as soon as he first heard of it, and crying: 'Sack, sack, is there such a thing as sack? I pray give me some sack'; and drinking of it (though, I conceive, moderately, for he was a very temperate man,) it increased his flux which he had then upon him."

This combination of English wine and Indian dysentery proved fatal for Coryat in December 1617. The location of his grave is now uncertain. Just outside of Surat is a domed Muslim-style monument which legend says is his burial site, but it is also possible that Coryat was laid to rest in Surat's English graveyard.

It is a sadly anonymous fate for someone so eager to make his mark in the world. However, although Coryat did not achieve the level of permanent historical recognition he probably craved, his could not be called an unsuccessful life. He was a brave, likable man who had adventures unheard of by most of his contemporaries and, for the most part, he seems to have had a jolly good time doing them. He deserves to be remembered.

I for one raise my fork to him.

Lord, He Was Born a Ramblin' Man: Review of "A Sense of the World," by Jason Roberts

James Holman

"Some difficulties meet, full many
I find them not, nor seek for any."
~James Holman's self-penned motto

The most active world traveler in history is believed to be an Englishman named James Holman. He traveled completely alone, braving the dangers and discomforts of early 19th century journeys without even the cushion of personal wealth to ease the way. By public carriage, by horseback, by peasant carts, by foot, he boldly entered every populated part of the globe without even knowing the native languages, but he always emerged not only alive, but with a profound understanding of the lands he had seen. He was simultaneously a reckless adventurer, a cool-headed explorer, and a sensitive poet.

He was also totally blind.

Holman was born on October 15, 1786, the fourth of six sons of John Holman, a successful Exeter apothecary. Holman the elder had ambitions for all his children, spending a great deal of money to have them well educated and placed in professions that would advance their social status. James was destined for a naval career. This delighted the boy. In later years, James wrote, "I have been conscious from my earliest youth of the existence of this desire to explore distant regions...to investigate with unwearied solicitude the moral and physical distinctions that separate and diversify the various nations of the earth." What better way to achieve this goal than by becoming a naval officer? Three weeks after he turned twelve, James was formally enlisted as a Volunteer First Class in the British Navy. As he was not only an adventurous and brave boy, but intelligent and determined, he seemed destined for a successful future following his life's dream. "I was determined not to rest satisfied until I had completed the circumnavigation of the globe."

However, destiny has a way of pulling tricks on us, and it had a particularly cruel one in store for James Holman. Holman was stationed in frigid North American waters, traveling between Nova Scotia and New England.  The harsh conditions of early 19th century life at sea, where sailors were mercilessly exposed to the worst extremes of cold, heat, wet and wind, often took its toll on their health, and before he had been at sea for six years, it became clear that Holman--who by this time had reached the rank of Lieutenant--was particularly vulnerable. He developed a serious case of rheumatism, which left his body so crippled by the agony--described as "exquisite pains" and "lying pains, which are increased by the least motion"--that for days at a time he was unable to move. None of the standard remedies of the time helped for very long. By 1807, naval physicians had proclaimed him "Unserviceable," and he was quickly bundled back to England. After a brief convalescence, Holman obtained a post on another ship, but before long, he again fell too ill to remain on duty. Desperate to regain his health, Holman went to Bath, the spa city that was a Mecca for Europe's invalids. His swollen, aching joints responded well to the mineral waters, and he began happily looking forward to resuming his aborted career.

Then, for the first time, his eyes began to pain him. The puzzled doctors could not tell him why. There was no visible injury or infection to be seen. This strange new affliction intensified with frightening speed. Within days, he was reduced to lying in a darkened room, his face covered with compresses. Nothing helped the increasing pain and pressure behind his eyes. Within a few weeks, he was suddenly, mysteriously blind. Although every eye treatment known to the medical science of the day was applied, nothing worked in the slightest. (Modern medical opinion believes Holman suffered from an eye inflammation called uveitis which caused optic nerve death. Uveitis is still a leading cause of blindness.)

Holman was only twenty-five years old, and it looked like his life was over. In his time, those who were sightless generally faced a grim future--begging or living as a charity case at best, destitution and death at worst. Holman was determined to avoid either fate. He vowed to find "some pursuit adapted to my new state of existence, a congenial field of employment and consolation." In short, he would carry on with his life. Holman's sense of hearing became unusually acute, and he soon learned to depend on sound not only to deal with people, but to negotiate the landscape around him. He could no longer see the world, but few people could match his ability to hear it. As he walked through a town, what to sighted people would be a mere blur of noise was to him an intricate soundscape providing a vast panorama of information.

Holman's next move was to relearn to write. He obtained a recently invented device called "the Noctograph," intended to enable sighted people to write in the dark. It was a wooden clipboard with wires stretched across horizontally. Sheets of special carbon paper were clipped under the wires. A stylus was used to press down on the papers, using the wires as guides to keep the lines of writing straight. The pressure pressed the "carbonated papers" on normal papers underneath, resulting in faint but perfectly legible marks. Being able to write by himself, without the usual blind person's reliance on scribes, gave Holman an added sense of independence.

Holman with his "Noctograph"

Holman made a successful application to the only job open to a blind former naval officer: The Naval Knights of Windsor. This knightly order was limited to "Seven gentlemen, who are to be superannuated or disabled Lieutenants of English men of war...single men without children, inclined to lead a virtuous, studious and devout life." These men were given a small salary and rooms at Windsor Castle for life, with their only duties being to attend service in the castle's chapel. It was a dull life, to be sure, but it enabled Holman to earn his own living, and the simple routines of the day gave him the opportunity to continue adjusting to life as a blind man.

Holman adjusted so well that what at first seemed a haven of safety and security soon began to feel like a prison. His blindness did not quench his naturally active and adventurous spirit. As he became more confident in navigating his surroundings, the thought that the rest of his life would be spent doing nothing but pacing between his apartment and the chapel filled him with a mounting dread amounting almost to panic. He badly needed something to do.

So Holman decided to become a doctor.

In the fall of 1813, Holman approached the governor's board of the Naval Knights with an unusual request: that he be granted leave to study at the University of Edinburgh. He pointed out that the University's classes were crammed into a single six-month session, which would leave him half the year to continue his Windsor duties. The bemused governors saw no good reason to refuse, so long as Holman paid his own way. On October 15--his twenty-seventh birthday--Holman set out for Edinburgh.

His plan to obtain higher education was not quite as daft as it sounded. The University had no entrance requirements, and most classes were conducted solely as lectures, meaning that students did not have to bother with written texts. It was a curriculum that relied on rote memorization, and Holman, most fortunately, had an excellent memory, a skill his blindness had only intensified. "Whatever I retain," he boasted with only slight exaggeration, "I retain permanently." After taking a number of courses on literature--a subject at which he excelled--Holman focused on studying medicine, suggesting that he had yet to give up on finding a cure--or at least learning the cause--of his blindness. He spent three years at his studies, becoming as conversant in "the practice of physic" as any physician of his day.

In 1818, Holman suffered another serious illness, which necessitated him leaving the University. Its cause is unclear. Holman himself merely attributed it to "the cultivation of those pursuits which were pressed upon me by the tasks I had prescribed to myself." The rigors of his self-imposed studies had left him mentally and physically exhausted.

His health did not improve after his return to Windsor. His doctors prescribed that popular remedy for obscure ailments: travel. It was arranged that Holman's brother Robert (who had also become a naval lieutenant) would obtain a formal leave of absence and escort James to France.

However, the planned day of departure dawned, and Robert still had not obtained his leave. James was raring to go, and he refused to be delayed for a moment. He made a decision that would shape the rest of his life: one way or another, he was going to France. Alone.

On October 15, 1819--another fateful birthday--Holman boarded a packet ship bound for Calais. He later wrote of this first solo adventure, "Behold me, then, in France! surrounded by a people, to me, strange, invisible, and incomprehensible; separated from every living being who could be supposed to take the least interest in my welfare, or even existence." He was a blind man, with little money, wandering in an unfamiliar land. He knew no one in France, and he could not even speak the language. He was entirely alone, unprotected, utterly dependent on his luck and his wits. Even a sighted person would find the prospect daunting.

Holman loved it.  In Roberts' words, "Solitary travel...was the collision of chaos and momentum, a constant, welcome assault on his senses and attention. It distracted him from his pain, and sparked new energies within." The "distraction" of travel became a physical and mental addiction. For the rest of Holman's life, whenever he had to stay inactive for long, he would come down with illnesses which were probably at least partly psychosomatic.

From Calais, Holman made his way to Paris in a two-wheeled cabriolet. It was a jolting, uncomfortable thirty-five hour trip, with only two stops along the way. As he continued to make his way across France, he followed a medical regimen of his own devising: lots of fresh fruit and vegetables, and plenty of exercise. He obtained the latter by periodically jumping out of the carriages, tying a length of cord to the vehicle, and, grasping the other end, following the carriage on foot, like a dog being taken for a walk. (It was a spectacle, Holman recalled, that gave "no small amusement" to onlookers.)

When Holman faced the end of his one-year leave of absence, he was in much better health, and in excellent spirits. The thought of giving up his freedom--a freedom seasoned with just enough risk to be intoxicating--for a return to the cloistered boredom of Windsor was unsupportable. He obtained an extension of his leave from the Admiralty, and set off for Italy.

He settled in Saint Rosalie, a vineyard estate just outside of Nice. Holman helped the locals pick grapes at harvest time and thoroughly joined in all the other rustic pastimes of what he called "this semblance of an earthly paradise." He was far from lonely. Holman's intelligence, charm, good looks, and easy geniality won him immediate friends everywhere he went, with his blindness giving him a certain exotic appeal--particularly among women. Throughout his travels, Holman had a number of platonic romances--his writings often read like a G-rated edition of Casanova's memoirs--but as far as is known, he never considered marriage. Roberts assumes Holman remained a bachelor because of his twin handicaps of blindness and poverty, but it was likely more than that. Holman enjoyed the society of women, and on occasion he wistfully envied the marital happiness of others, but someone as restless and independent as he was probably had no strong need for a permanent life partner. Even his many friendships had a "ships that pass in the night" quality that was undoubtedly deliberate on his part.

Holman sailed to Genoa, utterly indifferent to the fact that, with Naples at war with Austria, and Milan and Piedmont heading for revolution, Italy had become a very dangerous place to travel. He then proceeded to Rome, the most relatively calm area in the region. There, he made the acquaintance of a Scotsman named Dr. James Clark. The doctor obtained Holman lodgings most recently occupied by a patient of Clark's who had recently died--a young poet named John Keats. Holman soon moved on to Naples. He was anxious to climb Mount Vesuvius. He spent the rest of his wanderings across Europe in the company of an old friend he had encountered in Naples, a gentleman Holman only identified as "Mr. C-l-b-k." (In his writings, Holman followed that maddening--from a historian's point of view--19th century fondness for discreet initials.) "C-l-b-k" was completely deaf, giving their travels together a quality that Holman admitted was "somewhat droll."

The friends parted company in Amsterdam: "C-l-b-k" wished to go to Germany, while Holman felt obligated to return to England. He had been abroad two years, and the governors of the Naval Knights were losing patience with his long absence.

Back at Windsor, Holman's memories of his many travels seemed more real and important to him than the dull grind of the Knights. He hired scribes, and compiled a written record of his adventures. The resulting manuscript, given the self-explanatory title of "The Narrative of a Journey, Undertaken in the Years 1819, 1820, & 1821, Through France, Italy, Savoy, Switzerland, Parts of Germany Bordering on the Rhine, Holland, and The Netherlands" found a publisher. The book was a solid critical and popular success, with the author's blindness (which the book only mentioned in passing,) making it a genuine curiosity. By the time the book was released, Holman was no longer in England. He had set out to fulfill his boyhood dream.

He was going to, in his words, make "a circuit of the world."

Holman decided his best hope of reaching this unlikely, if not insane, aim was to start by traveling though Russia. If he could make it across that vast country, he would be nearly one-third of the way to his goal. He would keep expenses down by essentially living like a Russian peasant: traveling in their primitive carts and sledges, sleeping in the simplest hostels and eating the cheapest foods. He would save more money by dispensing with guides and translators. At the eastern end of the country, Holman would hitch a ride on a whaling ship to the Sandwich Islands. From there, he expected to have little trouble finding passage on a ship to take him around Cape Horn. He would make his way to South America and Africa, and finally return to Europe via the Mediterranean. He kept the true extent of his plans to himself, telling others that he was merely taking a casual tourist jaunt to Saint Petersburg, where his old friend "C-l-b-k," was now living. His reticence was due to what he knew would be "the opposition my kind friends have always been inclined to make against what, under my peculiar deprivation, they are disposed to regard as Quixotic feelings."

In other words, he knew everyone would think he was nuts.

Holman's "Quixotic" venture started on July 19, 1822, when he boarded a merchant vessel bound for the Russian harbor of Cronstadt. He did not bother obtaining formal leave. After all, he blithely told everyone, he would not be gone long.

In Saint Petersburg, "C-l-b-k" introduced Holman to the large British expatriate community. He spent a pleasant winter there, continuing his charade of claiming he intended to go no further than Moscow, while he worked at acclimating himself to Russia's subzero temperatures. At the beginning of spring, he set off for the White City. As had been the case in Saint Petersburg, he was instantly welcomed by local high society. A personable British officer who knew the latest news from the continent was considered a prize. His next intended stop was Irkutsk, the capital of Eastern Siberia that was known as the world's most isolated city. From there, he was told, he could obtain a license to travel anywhere he pleased. He bought a wagon and horses, hired a native Tartar to drive the vehicle, carefully packed his bags (he memorized where he placed all his belongings, so he could find them by touch,) and headed for Siberia. He faced open wilderness, bitter cold, vicious insect swarms, and rough or non-existent roads in one of the most inhospitable areas on earth. It was a situation, Holman exulted, "of extreme novelty."

In Irkutsk, he encountered an unexpected problem. After he had been unwise enough to confide the true scope of his plans to the Governor General, this worthy informed him that he could not leave Siberia without the express written consent of the Tsar himself. Instead of this consent, the Tsar sent an aide, to act as Holman's "personal escort." Whether Holman liked it or not. Holman soon realized that he was no longer a tourist, but a prisoner. Back in Moscow, he was put under a virtual house arrest, and forbidden to have visitors. The authorities did not bother to tell him why. After a few interviews with police officials, Holman was bundled into a carriage and driven into Poland. (Although the reason for his expulsion remained a mystery to Holman, it appears that the Russian authorities suspected him of being a spy.  The Tsar was very anxious to hide from the outside world any awareness of Russia's growing presence in North America, and Holman's seemingly inexplicable desire to explore that part of the world had roused the most dire suspicions in Russian high circles.)

Holman did not have a pleasant time in Poland. Everyone there assumed than anyone kicked out of Russia by the Tsar himself had to be some sort of dangerous desperado. After some difficulty, he was finally allowed to go to Austria, where he met a similarly chilly welcome. With something of an international cloud over his head, Holman was happy to return to England in the spring of 1824. He dictated a second book, with another spoiler-alert title: "Travels Through Russia, Siberia, Poland, Austria, Saxony, Prussia, Hanover, &c &c." He was given the honor of permission to dedicate the work to King George IV. The book, full of colorful and informative detail, was another great success, turning Holman into a literary celebrity. Holman was voted into the Linnean Society, and received an even greater honor when he was inducted into the Royal Society of London. Unfortunately, the Naval Knights were not nearly as impressed with Holman's exploits. The governors sternly informed him that there would be no more leaves of absence.

That did not trouble Holman. He was already hearing the call of the open road, and making secret plans to steal away. He had made the acquaintance of noted maritime surveyor Captain William Fitzwilliam Owen, who had just received a commission to start a British settlement in Fernando Po, an island in the Gulf of Guinea. This settlement would be the headquarters for Britain's fight against the slave trade. Owen was to capture slave ships and free their human cargo. As an ardent abolitionist, Owen was eager to take on this difficult and dangerous job. Among the crew Owen brought on his mission was Lieutenant James Holman, who fully shared Owen's antipathy to the "inhuman traffic" of slavery. Holman had managed to convince the Knights that the journey was necessary for his health. He failed to mention that he was going to an area of the world so malaria-ridden it was known as "the White Man's Grave."

Owen's expedition was ultimately disastrous. Although the native Fernandians were largely friendly enough, the dreaded malaria soon justified the region's macabre nickname, and many of the crew (including Holman) fell ill. Many died. The small community was beginning to run out of food. On top of that, Owen soon learned that it was extremely difficult to capture slave ships. The slavers were faster than Royal Navy ships, and they had the support of the regional leaders. Owen kept to his increasingly futile task until 1829, when he finally threw up his hands, turned Fernando Po over to a civil governor, and returned to England. Of the 135 men in his original crew, only 12 survived.

After about a year on Fernando Po, Holman moved on. He hitched a ride with a passing Dutch ship bound for Brazil. From Rio, Holman fell in with a mule train, and explored the Brazilian wilderness. He then obtained a berth on a Royal Navy ship that would take him as far as the Cape of Good Hope. Thereafter, Roberts tells us, ships of the Royal Navy accorded Holman a special status: "welcomed aboard, and, at the very least, allowed the standard courtesies of an officer in transit back to England...His presence onboard was wonderful for morale. He was not only profoundly pleasant company--a gracious guest and gifted listener--but a nearly inexhaustible source of entertainment. In addition to his own adventures, which he recounted with a storyteller's flair, his eidetic memory allowed him to unspool a vast stock of poetry, prose, and even jokes...Any pity directed toward him usually evaporated by the first week." To further cement his air of "belonging" on ship, Holman liked to initiate each new voyage by indulging in a sport sailors called "skylarking." He would climb to the top of the ship's mainmast--which in the open sea bucked like a mechanical horse--and wave triumphantly down to the crew. It was a stunt dangerous and foolhardy enough for anyone who could see. To see a sightless man carry it off must have been jaw-dropping. In time, people around Holman nearly forgot that he was blind.

When Holman landed in South Africa, he taught himself to ride a horse. He used his newfound talent to explore the open range. When possible, he always preferred wilderness to cities. He then sailed to Mauritius. After being warned there about the great unrest and anti-Western feelings in nearby Madagascar...Holman immediately departed for Madagascar. Next was Zanzibar, then the Seychelles Islands, then Ceylon (now Sri Lanka,) then India. In Calcutta, he found passage to China, where he amused himself by studying Cantonese, a subtle, inflected language which fascinated him. Around this time, he wrote an autobiographical poem:

The beauties of the beautiful
Are veiled before the blind,
Not so the graces and the bloom
That blossom in the mind.
The beauties of the finest form
Are sentenced to decay;
Not so the beauties of the mind,
They never fade away."

By this point, Holman was the internationally renowned "Blind Traveler." Like a modern-day celebrity, he was often asked for his autograph, or for some personal memento. When he reached New South Wales, the local press announced his arrival and reported on his movements like he was visiting royalty. In Sydney, they were amazed by his ability to ride horseback "as if possessed with every facility." He joined an exploring party in the Australian wilderness. Holman developed great respect for the Aborigines, and deplored the demeaning way in which they were treated by the white population.

Back in Sydney, he reluctantly knew it was time to return home. He had been wandering for five years, and he was well aware that he was pushing his luck with the Naval Knights--and the much-needed stipend they provided. At some point on his voyage home, Holman finally completed his "circuit of the world."

Holman in 1830

When he returned to London in August 1832, he was greeted by a formal censure from the Naval Knights. Not unreasonably, they felt they were scarcely getting their money's worth out of James Holman. Holman shrugged it off and prepared another book: "A Voyage Round the World, Including Travels in Africa, Asia, Australasia, America, etc., etc." It was a remarkably wide-ranging work, with digressions on the Fernandian language, a recipe for soy sauce, kangaroo hunts, Aboriginal mourning rituals, and instructions in plastering walls, Indian style. His section discussing the flora and fauna of the Indian Ocean would be used as reference material by Charles Darwin in "The Voyage of the Beagle." Unfortunately, the book was not nearly as successful as Holman's previous works, and the critics were equally dismissive.

Holman was still restless. His many travels seemed to feed his wanderlust, rather than quench it. He could no longer be at ease unless he was on the move. By 1836, he had convinced two doctors to write a petition asking that he be granted medical leave from his duties as a Knight. After some nagging, he managed to wangle a four-month leave. He visited Ireland, came back after precisely four months, and moped.

He obtained a lucky break when Victoria became queen in 1837. She chose as her royal physician Holman's old friend James Clark. Clark took up Holman's cause, and persuaded the queen to write the Naval Knights commanding that Holman be allowed to travel. However, the governors took umbrage at this bit of royal butting-in. They believed that the rules of their autonomous fraternal order were, in short, none of Victoria's business. The issue of Holman's freedom to travel became a genuine policy crisis over the scope of the royal prerogative. Not wanting to get into a legal battle they might well lose, the Crown gave in.

It was Holman himself who devised an ingenious solution to the dilemma. He wrote to the queen, suggesting that instead of giving Holman immunity from the Knight's dictates, she could have the dictates themselves modified. His proposal was that the order's charter be revised to state that any Knight whose infirmities prevented him from carrying out his duties might have dispensation direct from the Crown. As the Naval Knights was legally a creation of the Crown, it gave Victoria the right to amend the rules. Holman brought his case to the High Court of Justice, which--after eight years--ruled in his favor. And Holman was on the road again.

Holman traveled to Malta, Greece, Turkey, Syria, Beirut, Egypt. Then it was on to the Holy Land. He crossed the desert into Damascus. He toured the Adriatic Sea, and ventured into Montenegro. Contemporaries reported seeing him climbing Mount Sinai, examining Venice's Saint Mark's Cathedral by touch. A young American named Francis Parkman encountered Holman in Sicily. He admired the Englishman's "indomitable energy" and "noble appearance." Parkman, who went on to be one of the 19th century's most renowned historians, himself eventually lost his sight. His fear and sorrow about his affliction was greatly eased by his vivid memories of the indomitable Blind Traveler.

On and on Holman went. Bucharest, Transylvania, Hungary, a return to Austria and France. Then, after an absence of six years, the English Channel and home. It has been estimated that by this point in his life, he had traveled a quarter of a million miles--a path equivalent to walking to the moon. Holman returned to Windsor not out of desire, but from destitution. His book royalties were all spent, and he desperately needed to earn more money. Holman became a regular visitor to the Royal Society, where he was respected and beloved by his peers, and he plotted another book.

Holman in 1849

When Holman made the rounds of publishers, he found that he was, in brief, passe. Victorians thought of the blind as pitiful, helpless creatures, incapable of living anything like normal lives. The idea of reading a travel book written by a blind man seemed absurd to the extreme. Worse still, doubts--planted largely by jealous rival explorers--had been planted about his veracity. Many people simply refused to believe it was possible that a blind man could have accomplished what he did, and then accurately record his experiences. Holman now had, in Roberts' words, "an aura of anachronism." However unfairly, Holman had always been regarded as a novelty, and novelties rarely have a long shelf life. Undeterred, Holman continue to work not only on a manuscript of his most recent travels, but on his autobiography.

In 1852, Holman visited Norway and Sweden. It would be his final major round of travels, although he continued to make day trips across the Channel. Most of his energies centered around compiling his memoirs, which he planned to call "Holman's Narratives of His Travels." He saw this manuscript as not only his most important work, but his most personal one. It would, he felt, be his great enduring legacy, proving to the world that he was neither a helpless cripple or a novelty act.

By 1857, Holman's long-shaky health began to deteriorate. Like Ulysses S. Grant a few decades later, he began to see the completion of his memoirs as a race against Death. Also like Grant, he won the contest. In late July 1857, Holman finished his work. Less than one week later, on the 28th, Holman passed away. He probably thought of it as the ultimate solo journey.

Holman was given a quiet burial in London's Highgate Cemetery, and he was quickly forgotten by the public. His manuscripts, including the autobiography, were entrusted to his literary executor, Robert Bell. Bell shopped the manuscript to publishers, without finding any takers. After several years, he gave up trying.

The fate of this manuscript which had meant so much to Holman remains a mystery. After Bell's death, it was not found among his papers. The supposition is that Holman's memoirs were either accidentally or deliberately destroyed, although with any luck, the manuscript may yet turn up in a forgotten corner somewhere. It is a curious thing how history's most accomplished traveler left so few footprints behind him.

Roberts' book naturally centers around the unusual and compelling figure of James Holman, but it is also a vivid glance at the many interesting characters Holman encountered during his astonishingly peripatetic life. There is his deaf friend, the enigmatic "C-l-b-k," (who seems to have been some sort of International Man of Mystery.) There is a boyhood tutor of Holman's, a con man who went on to be the founder of Australia's public school system. There is the blind scientist who was the first to unlock the mystery of bees. On every page, one encounters explorers, eccentrics, world leaders, visionaries, heroes, cranks, and simply "ordinary" people who happened to cross paths with one very extraordinary man.

"A Sense of the World" moved me more than any book I have read in a very long time, and James Holman is someone I shall never forget. Whenever I start moaning and complaining about the difficulties and roadblocks fate throws me, I will think of Holman and what he managed to make of his life. And I will feel very ashamed of myself.

The Search For Timbuktu

The history of exploration is full of strange stories, but it is hard to think of any that have more elements of both tragedy and comic opera than the 19th century search for Timbuktu. This so-called "lost city" was that era's most intriguing prize. It was reputed to be a site of unparalleled richness lying waiting to be discovered in the heart of Africa. Tales were told of it being a place of unimaginable wealth, learning, and power--a sort of Atlantis on dry land.

There were, naturally, many efforts to find this magnificent hidden kingdom. And they only succeeded in finding The Weird.

The earliest known effort by a Westerner to discover the city was an American named John Ledyard. He had never been to Africa and knew not a word of Arabic, but that did not stop him from setting boldly out in 1788. He made it as far as Cairo, when, while ineptly treating himself for a "bilious complaint," he accidentally overdosed himself with sulphuric acid. He died almost immediately. He could not know it, but his expedition was to set the tone for all explorers following in his footsteps.

The next hunt for Timbuktu was led by an Irishman, Daniel Houghton, in 1791. All went well until he reached Gambia. He was attacked by bandits, who stole his supplies and beat him to death.

In 1795, a Scottish explorer named Mungo Park set off for Timbuktu, only to also be robbed along the way. He tried again in 1803 with a party of 46 men. Not one of them came back alive.

In 1817, a British surgeon named Joseph Ritchie (now mostly known--if he's known at all--as a friend of the poet Keats) tried his hand at finding Timbuktu. Ritchie had no experience whatsover as an explorer, and it showed. He spent the small sum allocated to him in mostly worthless ways--including having himself circumcised so he could pass himself off as an Arab. His party soon ran out of supplies, and he wound up dying of starvation embarrassingly quickly.

The growth of serious Timbuktu madness can be blamed on a now-obscure fabulist named James Jackson. In 1809 he published a book with the alluring title, "An Accurate and Interesting Account of Timbuktu, the Great Emporium of Central Africa." It may not have been accurate, but it was certainly interesting. It described a huge city boasting vast wealth and natural resources--it was literally paved with gold--a paradisaical climate, and, perhaps of greatest interest to Jackson's male readers, loads of beautiful, sexually adventurous women. His Timbuktu was sort of a cross between the Garden of Eden and the Playboy Mansion.

It's still not quite certain if Jackson was a deliberate fantasist or a deluded lunatic, but in any case, the book was a massive best-seller, going through at least ten editions. No one, it seems, questioned the scientific accuracy of the book, and the hunt for Timbuktu became an obsession throughout Europe.

The first major search for this glittering prize was a Venetian Egyptologist named Giovanni Belzoni, who set off in 1823.  Before he had traveled more than ten miles, he died of dysentery.

In 1824, the British decided to give it another go. The responsibility for planning the expedition fell to Lord Henry Bathurst, the Secretary of State for Colonial Affairs. This was to prove to be an unfortunate choice. As Timbuktu was thought to lie about 500 miles inland from Africa's west coast, the logical thing to do would be to approach it from that direction.

Bathurst, however--for reasons no one has quite understood--opted to approach Timbuktu from the north. It did not seem to bother him that this meant crossing 3,000 miles of the Sahara Desert. He blithely assumed one could sail into Tripoli, rent a few camels, and just ride to one oasis after another until you reached Timbuktu. It was a thoroughly insane plan. One would have to be thoroughly insane to go through with it.

Enter Alexander Gordon Laing.

The thirty-year-old Laing was an officer in the Royal African Colonial Corps in Sierra Leone. He was handsome, idealistic, brave, energetic, dashing, adventurous, and highly ambitious.

Unfortunately, he was also a delusional egomaniac.

Laing, like nearly all seekers of Timbuktu, had no experience as an explorer. In fact, he had little experience in much of anything other than writing dreadful poems about himself. As for his capabilities as a military officer, his commander once wrote that "His military exploits are even worse than his poetry."

Nevertheless, he had from boyhood nursed dreams of making himself famous by "some important discovery." He felt he was the one destined to finally find the legendary Timbuktu. He wrote with his usual grandiloquence, "The world will forever remain in ignorance of the place, as I make no vainglorious assertion when I say that it will never be visited by Christian man after me...I am so wrapt in the success of this enterprise that I think of nothing else all day and dream of nothing else all night." When he learned of Bathurst's expedition, he immediately volunteered to lead the mission. Bathurst was favorably impressed by Laing's courage, poise, and willingness to make the trip on the cheap. The madcap young officer was hired on the spot.

Laing set off for Africa in 1825. He eventually made his way to Tripoli, where the British Consul, Hanmer Warrington, was to help him travel to the interior of the continent. However, the more Warrington saw of Laing, the more pessimistic he became about the would-be explorer's chances for success. The younger man's uncertain health, lack of money, and general air of fecklessness disturbed him.

Warrington became even more disturbed when his daughter Emma fell instantly in love with Laing. Before long, the young couple was begging him to allow them to marry. The idea of having this impecunious--and, he was now convinced, slightly cracked--would be explorer as a son-in-law horrified him, and he initially refused to even consider the idea. He wrote Bathurst, "Although I am aware that Major Laing is a very gentlemanly, honourable and good man still I must allow a more wild, enthusiastic and romantic attachment never before existed." Finally, when Emma threatened to kill herself if she was not allowed to marry Laing, Warrington relented--with one condition. He allowed them to go through with a marriage service, but the union was not to be consummated until Laing returned alive and well from his expedition.

Warrington evidently surmised that the chances of that happening were small.

The young lovers agreed to his terms, and they were wed in July 1825. Love gave a new impetus to Laing's ambitions. He was now seeking fame and fortune not just for himself, but for the lady of his heart. "I shall do more than has ever been done before," he vowed, "and shall show myself to be what I have ever considered myself, a man of enterprise and genius." Four days after the wedding, he began his trek across the Sahara, taking with him only a few camels and a small band of assistants.

Highly dangerous, uncharted territory, lack of any skilled planning, little outdoors experience, and a leader who was a real-life version of Monty Python's Black Knight. What could go wrong?

Everything, of course. Although we know very little about this expedition other than Laing's few surviving letters, it is clear that this was an enterprise doomed even before it began. The would-be conqueror's messages back to Tripoli consisted largely of poems (about himself, naturally) and paranoid attacks on his rival explorers, particularly one Hugh Clapperton, who was at that time conducting his own Timbuktu expedition. Although the two men did not know each other, Laing had become convinced that Clapperton was part of some sort of conspiracy against him. (As it happened, Clapperton--a far more experienced explorer--was himself resentful that the Colonial Office had commissioned a neophyte like Laing.) This sense of personal affront made Laing all the more obsessed with being the first to find the legendary land of Timbuktu.

In his letters, Laing repeatedly begged his reluctant father-in-law to send him a miniature of Emma. Otherwise, he added rather unnecessarily, "I might go mad." When he received the portrait, Laing was distraught. Emma, he thought, looked pale and unhappy. Was she ill? Pining for him? In a sudden panic, he wrote Warrington that he was immediately returning to Tripoli. The Consul, feeling himself unable to handle another dose of his lunatic son-in-law's society, quickly replied with reassuring words about Emma's good health and spirits.

As it happened, it was not Warrington that persuaded Laing to continue his journey, but a comet he saw in the sky. He saw it as a "happy omen" beckoning him on. He received further encouragement in the news that Clapperton's expedition was finding its own share of troubles. (Clapperton eventually died before reaching Timbuktu.)

Laing and his little party pressed on, undeterred by lack of food (at one point, Laing recorded that he had gone for an entire week without eating) and temperatures that soared as high as 120 degress Fahrenheit. Their small supply of drinking water was muddy and hot. Virtually all they had to eat were repulsive patties of dried fish soaked in camel milk. After five months of this slow torture, he reached an oasis in what is now Algeria. From there, Laing was certain, it was merely a short hop across the desert to his goal.

Unfortunately, at this stage in the journey, a new danger emerged. His planned route was dominated by tribesmen called the Tuareg, desert pirates who made a practice of preying on those foolhardy enough to travel through their domain. The local traders told Laing that it would be necessary for him to give a large bribe to the Tuaregs before they would allow him through. Even then, they advised, his safety was by no means assured. They strongly suggested that he just forget the whole thing.

Laing scoffed at such cautionary words. He was never one for taking anyone's advice, and besides, he was convinced he was a Man of Destiny. He refused to pay off the Tuaregs, and he certainly would not turn back now. In January of 1826, he resumed his journey. Within a couple of days, his caravan was attacked by the Tuaregs, who killed several of the party and took all their possessions. Laing himself was seriously wounded, with no one to help him except an injured driver and a couple of forlorn camels. Undeterred, he had the man strap him on one of his camels, and the nightmare trek went on. Laing wrote to Tripoli describing his injuries in harrowing detail. He had eight saber cuts on his head, "all fractures from which much bone has come away," a fractured jaw, a mutilated ear, a "dreadful gash" on the back of his neck, a musket ball through his hip, five saber cuts on his right arm which left three fingers broken, a broken left arm, and deep gashes on both legs. Oh, and he had caught the plague, as well.

Making his resemblance to the Black Knight complete, he seemed to shrug it all off as only a flesh wound. His main concern was that his beloved Emma would be turned off by his disfigured condition.

Never underestimate the power of blind obsession. Amazingly enough, this ill-equipped eccentric, now seriously broken in both body and mind, succeeded where so many other more experienced, more well-funded men had failed. On August 13, 1826, Laing entered the city of Timbuktu.

It must have been one of the greatest anticlimaxes in the history of exploration. A few centuries earlier, Timbuktu had indeed been a prosperous trading post and center of learning, but the town had long fallen into decay. Instead of the wealthy Valhalla Laing had been promised, he found a dreary little collection of mud brick buildings populated by largely impoverished villagers who were wondering what in the hell he was doing there.

Timbuktu in 1830

This letdown, instead of forcing Laing to come to his senses, seems to have propelled him all the way over the edge. He cheerfully wrote that this "great capital...has completely met my expectations." He took to parading through the streets in full dress uniform, informing the understandably bemused populace that he was the emissary of the King of England.

He had informed Tripoli that he intended to travel to Sierra Leone, but for reasons unknown, he headed in the opposite direction. On or about September 25, 1826, he and a servant were attacked by Tuaregs. They strangled Laing to death, then cut off his head. His body was left in the desert to rot. The servant, who had only survived by pretending to be dead, made his way to Tripoli two years later, where he told the world of the tragedy. [Note: Some historians believe Laing was actually murdered by his guide, a supposedly "friendly" sheik who had volunteered to escort him through the desert. The theory is that the sheik feared that if Laing returned alive, he would expose the area's thriving slave trade and bring in other highly unwanted foreigners.]

Emma Warrington Laing was devastated by the news of her husband's gruesome death. Although her father pushed her into an early remarriage--to his vice consul--she never recovered from the shock, and spent the short remainder of her life suffering from ill health and depression. She joined her first husband in the grave in 1829, aged only twenty-eight.

It is a cruel irony that although Laing had succeeded in his goal of being the first European to reach Timbuktu, he has received little of the glory he so yearned for. Although he had kept a journal detailing his adventure, it was lost after his death. In 1828, a Frenchman named René Caillié managed to enter the city. While there, he confirmed what little was known of Laing's fate. On his return, he published a grandiose history of his travels which reached a wide audience. The French gleefully publicized his achievement, boasting mendaciously that it was a Frenchman "with his scanty personal resources alone" who had been the first to reach Timbuktu, not one of the hated British. As a result, Laing's feat was curiously overshadowed.

That undoubtedly would have pained him more than any saber wound.

Alexandra David-Neel, Explorer and Self-Made Tibetan

"The attitude which these teachings advocate is one of a strong will to know all that is possible to know, never halt on the road to investigation which extends infinitely far before the feet of the explorer."
-Alexandra David-Neel, "The Secret Oral Teachings in Tibetan Buddhist Sects"

Some of history's most unusual people have come from the most ordinary, traditional backgrounds. One good example is Alexandra Marie David, who was born into a humble, bourgeois French family in 1868. The little girl was raised to have an uncomplicated, thoroughly anonymous existence. Instead, she became one of the most unconventional explorers in modern history.

Alexandra's childhood was desperately unhappy. Although she was devoted to her father, she had no love for her rigid, puritanical mother, and the two often quarreled. She detested her carefully restricted little world, and dreamed of a life full of travel and adventure. The minute she was old enough to fend for herself, she set out to make those dreams come true. While still a teenager, she fled home and family for the life of a wanderer. Alexandra's spiritual leanings were equally restless in nature. She became a member of Madame Blavatsky's Theosophical Society, the Freemasons, and various feminist and anarchist societies. Her greatest love, however, was Oriental culture.

Miss David became a highly successful opera singer, a career that took her around the world. However, even that soon proved too tame an existence for her liking. In 1903, she took up journalism. In 1904, she married a distant cousin, Philippe Neel. Although she was genuinely fond of her husband, it was a marriage of convenience, with the couple seeing very little of each other after the wedding. To be blunt, she married him in order to obtain funds for her obsession with travel. The new Mrs. Neel made no secret of the fact that she despised the institution of marriage and found sex repulsive. It is hard to say what Philippe got out of their relationship, but he seemed to have little complaint with their unorthodox union, and continued to support her until his death in 1941. While Mrs. Neel lived in London, occupying herself with writing and studying Eastern sacred literature, Mr. Neel continued his work as a railroad engineer in Tunisia.

Alexandra David-Neel had long dreamed of touring Asia. and in 1911 her husband provided her with the money to travel to India, where she impressed everyone with her deep knowledge and love of Buddhism. She even obtained two private audiences with the Dalai Lama--the first European woman to be granted this honor. During her stay, she gradually shed her Western identity. She became fluent in Tibetan, and began to think of herself as a native of that country.

It is a tribute to David-Neel's imposing erudition as an Orientalist that many Tibetans felt the same way about her. She was welcomed at many Tibetan monasteries that were normally off-limits to outsiders. At one of them, she met a young man named Aphur Yongden, who remained her constant attendant and aide until his death in 1955. She continued her travels throughout India, China, and Tibet, but she was still dissatisfied. She had yet to feel she was a true Tibetan. The only way she could do that, she decided, was to train for their priesthood, to experience all the rigorous mental and physical hardships required for their spiritual leaders.

She became the disciple of a Tibetan occult master--believed by many to be a wizard--Gomchen of Lachen. Beginning in 1914, David-Neel spent two solid years living in a cave adjoining his atop a high mountain, facing all the harshest elements while he schooled her in tantric Buddhism. Hers had always been an ascetic and ambitious nature, but this was certainly the ultimate test of her devotion to stoicism and self-discipline. She saw no reason why she should not accomplish such a feat. As she later wrote in her book "Magic and Mystery in Tibet": “All of these seekers after miracles would perhaps be most surprised to hear me say that the Tibetans do not believe in miracles, that is to say, in supernatural happenings. They consider the extraordinary facts which astonish us to be the work of natural energies which come into action in exceptional circumstances, or through the skill of someone who knows how to release them, or sometimes, through the agency of an individual who unknowingly contains within himself the elements apt to move certain material or mental mechanisms which produce extraordinary phenomena.”

She loved every minute of the experience. The holy men of Tibet were astonished by her accomplishment, and welcomed her as one of their own. Some of them thought she must be the reincarnation of a goddess. The British, who were currently occupying Tibet, were less pleased with her. They wanted no outsiders in the country, and this obstreperous more-Tibetan-than-the-Tibetans female was a most undesirable nuisance. At the height of the First World War, they threw her out. David-Neel shrugged and went on a tour of Japan and Korea. She went across China--then spiraling into civil war--crossed Mongolia and the Gobi desert, and eventually slipped back into Tibet.

David-Neel had her sights on the remote holy city of Lhasa, a place no white woman--and very very few white men--had ever seen. Just to get there meant a long, dangerous journey through China and over the Himalayas. She didn't think twice. Disguising herself as a Tibetan peasant woman, she and Yongden spent a year navigating bandits, blizzards, and mountain passes that went as high as 20,000 feet. On one occasion, all that saved the duo was David-Neel's incredible powers of concentration. After spending some twenty hours climbing a snow-covered mountain, they found their flint and steel were too wet to light a fire. Facing the immediate prospect of freezing to death, David-Neel used the ancient Tibetan practice known as "thumo reskiang"--raising one's internal temperature through the power of the mind--to warm the flint and steel sufficiently to start a fire. (She once wrote, "The Tibetans also tend to believe that everything which one imagines can be realized. They claim that if the imagined facts corresponded to no external reality, one could not conceive of their images...the power of producing magic formations, tulkus or less lasting and materialized tulpas, [essentially, conjured phantoms] does not, however, belong exclusively to such mystic exalted beings. Any human, divine or demoniac being may be possessed of it. The only difference comes from the degree of power, and this depends on the strength of the concentration and the quality of the mind itself." However, she added, "it is possible for these individuals to obtain, in certain cases, the aid of beings whose nature is other than human.")

In 1923, the fifty-five year old David-Neel finally arrived in Lhasa, still successfully disguised. After a stay of several months, the British finally caught on to her, and she and Yongden were again booted out of the country. The highly disgruntled David-Neel settled in France, where her book about this adventure, "My Journey to Lhasa," was published in 1927.

David-Neel lived in Europe for the next ten years, writing extensively about Eastern mysticism. In the 1930s, she returned to China and India, but was forced to flee in 1944 following the Japanese invasion. She finally returned to France, which remained her home until her death at the age of 101 in 1969. As she had requested, she was cremated and her ashes scattered in the Ganges River.

She died knowing the satisfaction of living a long and productive life. She had been given many honors, including membership in the French Legion of Honor and a Gold Medal from the Geographical Society of Paris. Even more importantly, her many books (most notably "Magic and Mystery in Tibet,") remain an invaluable source of information about central Asia and Tibetan Buddhism. She had a talent for making even the most esoteric concepts readily understandable to the uninitiated.  Her travels and experiences were unrivaled by any other Western woman of her time, and still serve as an inspiration for many people to this day.