Burton Holmes, the man who brought the world home
Excerpt from the book "Burton Holmes Travelogues"
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It is an incontrovertible fact that the Hopi prayers are usually far more efficacious in bringing rains than are the prayers of the average country clergymen. But on the day following the invocation, there burst over the villages a terrific thunderstorm. The north heavens were as black as night, fierce lightning flashed, and the rain descended, as if entire lakes had been snatched up by the grateful Rain Gods, wrapped in black vapors, and dispatched to Hopi Land to answer the prayers of the Good People. Yet the downpour fell only upon the Hopi mesas and upon their fields. [1898]
Long years ago in the piny depths of the Yellowstone National Park I met a lone wanderer touring through that Northwestern wonderland with two ponies, one for himself and one for his pack. He had no tent, only a sleeping-bag, and his camp kitchen was rudimentary and extremely portable. He could mobilize in a minute. He had been on the move for many months and intended to keep on the move until he had seen all there was to see between his home town in the Middle West and his Ultima Thule - the Golden Gate. His expenses averaged just 50 cents a day. He sized up my comparatively elaborate outfit and inquired, "Are you travelin', or just goin' somewhere?" I did not know just how to answer him. Do we ever really travel in America? We do travel in Europe, in Asia, in Africa - but is it not true that in our own country we are usually "just goin" somewhere - more often than not going to the same place we went to last year and the year before? In the course of our goings to and fro at home few of us ever get that delightful sense of being otherwhere, that fascinating "foreign feel" that lends so much charm to travel abroad - in the older world of Europe or the East. Yet this travel thrill born of strangeness and difference and novelty, or inspired by the historical associations of some place or scene, is to be had in our own country if we will "go abroad at home" in the same spirit in which we go abroad - abroad.
Someone once said of California "It is our Italy." California is more than that. It is not only our Italy with its sunshine and flowers, its volcanoes and vineyards; it is our Riviera too, with its blue skies, its rocky cliffs, its plutocratic villas looking down upon an azure sea and its costly caravansaries for the homeless rich. It is our Egypt, with its reclaimed deserts: a carefree "Bohemia" lives again in California's colossal groves. It is our Spain, with its old churches, silent cloisters and crumbling epoch-marking missions, its liquid Castillian placenames, its barrancos and arroyos. California is today more Spanish than it has been since it became American.
Page [1] [2] [3] [4] [5] [6] [7] [8]
Page [1] [2] [3] [4] [5] [6] [7] [8]
It is an incontrovertible fact that the Hopi prayers are usually far more efficacious in bringing rains than are the prayers of the average country clergymen. But on the day following the invocation, there burst over the villages a terrific thunderstorm. The north heavens were as black as night, fierce lightning flashed, and the rain descended, as if entire lakes had been snatched up by the grateful Rain Gods, wrapped in black vapors, and dispatched to Hopi Land to answer the prayers of the Good People. Yet the downpour fell only upon the Hopi mesas and upon their fields. [1898]
Long years ago in the piny depths of the Yellowstone National Park I met a lone wanderer touring through that Northwestern wonderland with two ponies, one for himself and one for his pack. He had no tent, only a sleeping-bag, and his camp kitchen was rudimentary and extremely portable. He could mobilize in a minute. He had been on the move for many months and intended to keep on the move until he had seen all there was to see between his home town in the Middle West and his Ultima Thule - the Golden Gate. His expenses averaged just 50 cents a day. He sized up my comparatively elaborate outfit and inquired, "Are you travelin', or just goin' somewhere?" I did not know just how to answer him. Do we ever really travel in America? We do travel in Europe, in Asia, in Africa - but is it not true that in our own country we are usually "just goin" somewhere - more often than not going to the same place we went to last year and the year before? In the course of our goings to and fro at home few of us ever get that delightful sense of being otherwhere, that fascinating "foreign feel" that lends so much charm to travel abroad - in the older world of Europe or the East. Yet this travel thrill born of strangeness and difference and novelty, or inspired by the historical associations of some place or scene, is to be had in our own country if we will "go abroad at home" in the same spirit in which we go abroad - abroad.
Someone once said of California "It is our Italy." California is more than that. It is not only our Italy with its sunshine and flowers, its volcanoes and vineyards; it is our Riviera too, with its blue skies, its rocky cliffs, its plutocratic villas looking down upon an azure sea and its costly caravansaries for the homeless rich. It is our Egypt, with its reclaimed deserts: a carefree "Bohemia" lives again in California's colossal groves. It is our Spain, with its old churches, silent cloisters and crumbling epoch-marking missions, its liquid Castillian placenames, its barrancos and arroyos. California is today more Spanish than it has been since it became American.
Page [1] [2] [3] [4] [5] [6] [7] [8]
Burton Holmes Travelogues, The Greatest Traveler of His Time
Hardcover, 30.5 x 26 cm (12 x 10.2 in.), 368 pages
$ 59.99
$ 59.99
Wanderlust: Burton Holmes, the man who brought the world home
Burton Holmes at Home, Editing Glass Lantern Slides, ca. 1930