Early Travel Research Articles

Comparison of Early and Late Travel Times of Pressure Pulses Induced by Multilevel Slug Tests

During a slug test, injection or withdrawal of a small volume of water through an open borehole in an aquifer induces a pressure pulse propagation process in the aquifer. Hydraulic data sets that are collected during this procedure can be manipulated by mathematical inversion to estimate the hydraulic properties near the borehole. In this paper, we report our finite element forward modeling of slug tests in an aquifer with stratigraphical heterogeneities. Our numerical studies, which resulted in contour plots of head perturbation and travel time, show that the early hydraulic travel time contour associated with partially penetrating slug tests in a heterogeneous aquifer could display a spatial distribution that is quite different from the late travel time contour. While the late travel time contour primarily reflects the integrated effect of widely propagated pressure distribution, the early travel times reflect the preferential flow and therefore can be exploited for hydrostratigraphical imaging of the aquifer. We argue that the early portion of hydraulic signals contains information that is complementary to the conventional peak travel time inversion and plays an indispensable role in gaining enhanced characterization of a geological unit’s hydraulic properties. Furthermore, our modeling results demonstrate that early hydraulic travel times are not always associated with the shortest flow path.

Visiting America: notes from an alcohol‐focused study tour made in 1961

This paper has as its focus a study tour made by the author in 1961. Diary notes are used to capture a historical moment in the evolution of alcohol studies. The paper will argue for the continuing value today of such experiences in support of career development and the building of 'the field'. Diary notes and personal recollection. The United States was at the time more active than the United Kingdom in its response to alcohol problems. There was, however, a disjunction between the elite American research world and the world of action, which was not informed greatly by research. For the most part, treatment services and prevention strategies seemed driven by opinion rather than by evidence. But at the level of serious scientific endeavour there was opportunity to meet influential figures including Seldon Bacon, Morris Chafetz, Milton Gross, Ebbe Curtis Hoff, Harris Isbell, E. M. Jellinek, Mark Keller, Benjamin Kissen, Robert Strauss, Wolf Schmidt and Abraham Wikler, who generously made their time available. These diary notes provide a snapshot of a field of endeavour at a critical stage of transition from uninformed assumptions towards establishment of a research base which can inform public action. The visit was of tangible value to the visitor in several different identified ways. Such an experience is inevitably time-bound and personal, but there are general conclusions to be drawn as to the benefits which will be derived from early travel opportunities in a field such as alcohol studies, which is all too easily culture-bound in its horizons and assumptions. Alcohol science needs to be more reflective on its history and the mechanisms that help to make it happen.

Review: The Making of John Ledyard: Empire and Ambition in the Life of an Early American Traveler, by Edward G. Gray

Review: <i>The Making of John Ledyard: Empire and Ambition in the Life of an Early American Traveler</i>, by Edward G. Gray

:The Making of John Ledyard: Empire and Ambition in the Life of an Early American Traveler

:The Making of John Ledyard: Empire and Ambition in the Life of an Early American Traveler

The Potomac Canal: George Washington and the Waterway West (review)

Reviewed by: The Potomac Canal: George Washington and the Waterway West August Nigro The Potomac Canal: George Washington and the Waterway West. By Robert Kapsch. (Morgantown: West Virginia University Press, 2007. Pp. 373.) Robert Kapsch's book traces the rise and fall of the Potomac Canal, which connected the port city of Georgetown Maryland, to the agriculturally rich Appalachian frontier during the late eighteenth and early nineteenth centuries. Kapsch points out that, while overshadowed by its more profitable successors, the Chesapeake and Ohio Canal and the Baltimore and Ohio Railroad, the Potomac Canal played an instrumental role in the nation's early transportation revolution, a role that has often been ignored. To correct this, Kapsch traces the development of the canal, from the earliest plans to use the Potomac as a conduit to the west in the mid-eighteenth century, to its construction at the turn of the century, and to its eventual demise in the late 1820s. Begun in 1785 and eclipsed by the C & O Canal in 1828, the Potomac Canal's utility as a transportation conduit was relatively short-lived. Regardless of its eventual failure as a profitable navigation system, Kapsch is correct in pointing out its unique role in the early nation's history. One of the most interesting points of the book is showing the close connection between the Potomac Company and George Washington, one of its most fervent boosters. Beginning with his early travels up the Potomac during the buildup to the French and Indian War, and continuing into his presidential administration, Washington pressed to use the Potomac as a gateway to the West. The story of Washington's enchantment with the river has been told before, most recently in Joel Achenbach's The Grand Idea: George Washington's Potomac and the Race to the West (New York: Simon and Schuster, 2004). But Kapsch broadens his narrative to move beyond this well-told tale. By looking at the development of one of the earliest canal systems created in the United States, Kapsch does an excellent job highlighting the difficulties and demands in the nation's early canal construction. Relying heavily on the work of more experienced English engineers, the Potomac Company built what would prove to be an inadequate system of sluice [End Page 111] channels to bypass the river's treacherous rapids and falls. Once completed, the canal was mainly used to ship flour and coal to the port city of George-town. Limited to descending navigation during the spring and summer months, the Potomac Canal never fulfilled Washington's vision of a viable gateway to the west. As Kapsch states, "it would be left to later navigation and transportation systems to [build] on the successes and missteps of the visionary, but flawed, Potomac Company" (301). Kapsch does an admirable job detailing the rise and fall of the Potomac Canal. This narrative is greatly aided by the rich illustrations found throughout the work. Beautifully illustrated with architectural drawings of the canal and numerous paintings of the surrounding countryside, Kapsch's book serves as a rich source of primary material on both the early history of canal building in America and the Potomac River valley. The Potomac Canal provides an excellent reference guide to anyone interested in the history of American canal building in general or the history of the Potomac River valley in particular. August Nigro Atlantic Cape Community College Copyright © 2008 West Virginia University Press

Teaching &amp; Learning Guide for: ‘Nowhere is a Place’: Travel Writing in Sixteenth‐Century England

Teaching &amp; Learning Guide for: ‘Nowhere is a Place’: Travel Writing in Sixteenth‐Century England

The Missing Fifth Dimension: The Writing of Australian History in Germany*

German historical writing about Australia can be traced back to the early periods of European exploration of Terra incognita. A corpus of German‐Australian literature exists in the historical notes that were part of early travel books, geographic sketches and emigrant guides. Historical fiction provides another element. However an empirical historiography which elevated Australian history from footnotes and established it as the focus of a professional discipline did not develop until later. Australia was too often wrongly viewed as a space without history. This article examines the professional treatment of Australian history in Germany and the difficult path which faced those who sought to establish the history of Australia as an independent research field. It focuses upon three aspects: (a) the historical background of German Overseas Studies; (b) Australian history as topic in Germany's historiography; and (c) the post‐war situation of Australian historical studies in Germany.

Authenticating Mäori Physicality: Translations of ‘Games’ and ‘Pastimes’ by Early Travellers and Missionaries to New Zealand

This paper theorizes how knowledge of indigenous tribal epistemologies was made ‘knowable’ through Enlightenment rationalism in an early colonial context. Specifically, the paper determines how and what knowledge of Mäori tribal physical activities was interpreted and authenticated through early travellers' tales and missionaries’ accounts in New Zealand. The central thesis argues that what was established as authentic and truthful aligned with Enlightenment rationalism, while those Mäori physical practices incomprehensible to Western understandings were deemed inauthentic and, consequently, were obscured and/or discarded. Throughout, the article theorizes the translation of knowledge into meaningful Western discourses and how these translations came to be crystallized in the colonial imagination.

Taxonomies of Travel and Martial Identity in Thomas Churchyard's A generall rehearsall of warres and ‘A Pirates Tragedie’ (1579)

Thomas Churchyard (1523?-1604)—a prolific soldier, author and translator—remains a relatively minor figure in accounts of early modern English travel writing. When invoked, he is commonly credited with producing triumphant descriptions of Elizabethan voyages, such as the account of Humphrey Gilbert's expedition to Newfoundland and A prayse, and reporte of Maister Martyne Forboishers voyage to Meta Incognita which were both published in 1578. However, by considering the influence of travel upon the representations of martial identity in his work, this essay argues that Churchyard's meditations on overseas and domestic journeying are more complex than the standard view of his portfolio of travel writing suggests.

A Translator's Voyage: The Greek Landscape in George Sandys's Relation of a Journey (1615)

Unlike other early modern travellers to Greece, George Sandys was a poet and translator, interested in relating the past to the present and thus foreshadowing the trend of studying the classics in situ rather than in the library. Although the quotations from ancient literature, interwoven with descriptions of landscapes, may function as a way of effacing subjectivity and avoiding contact with the confusing realities of the foreign place, Sandys's narrative is intriguing in its suggestion of an alternative conception of space; literature and history give meaning to the author's experience and classical loci map the locations in his itinerary, rather than the opposite. Sandys's writing is structured through contradictions, especially while travelling in Greece, whose ambiguity is both geographical (situated at the threshold between East and West) and cultural (its noble past set against its ignoble present). Held until the nineteenth century by a non-Western power, the Ottoman Empire, Greece complicates the ‘typical’ colonial (or rather postcolonial) model used in reading travel writing and defies interpretations of the early modern accounts of the region as simply ‘Orientalist’. In Sandys's travelogue, the sight of the foreign place is itself a translation, a rendering of the unknown into the known, similar to the appropriation of the classics through the work of the Renaissance translator.

Cruising with Robert Louis Stevenson: travel, narrative, and the colonial body

Cruising with Robert Louis Stevenson: Travel, Narrative, and the Colonial Body is the first book-length study about the influence of travel on Robert Louis Stevenson’s writings, both fiction and nonfiction. Within the contexts of late-Victorian imperialism and ethnographic discourse, the book offers original close readings of individual works by Stevenson while bringing new theoretical insights to bear on the relationship between travel, authorship, and gender identity. Oliver S. Buckton develops “cruising” as a critical term, linking Stevenson’s leisurely mode of travel with the striking narrative motifs of disruption and fragmentation that characterize his writings. Buckton follows Stevenson’s career from his early travel books to show how Stevenson’s major works of fiction, such as Treasure Island, Kidnapped, and The Ebb-Tide, derive from the innovative techniques and materials Stevenson acquired on his global travels. Exploring Stevenson’s pivotal role in the revival of “romance” in the late nineteenth century, Cruising with Robert Louis Stevenson highlights Stevenson’s treatment of the human body as part of his resistance to realism, arguing that the energies and desires released by travel are often routed through resistant or comic corporeal figures. Buckton also focuses on Stevenson’s writing about the South Seas, arguing that his groundbreaking critiques of European colonialism are formed in awareness of the fragility and desirability of Polynesian bodies and landscapes. Cruising with Robert Louis Stevenson will be indispensable to all admirers of Stevenson as well as of great interest to readers of travel writing, Victorian ethnography, gender studies, and literary criticism.

Charting Early American Travel: Mobility, Mapping, and Identity

Charting Early American Travel: Mobility, Mapping, and Identity

Isthmus in the World: Elements for an Environmental History of Panama

Abstract This article proposes a framework for the study of interactions between human societies and the natural world in the Isthmus of Panama, and the consequences of these interactions over time. It also wants to encourage a new reading of the best-known sources and authors associated with this issue – from the reports of early Spanish travelers to the writings of contemporary specialists such as Dolores Piperno, Richard Cooke, Omar Jaén Suárez, and Alfredo Castillero Calvo –, as well as the adoption of a new perspective on the deep origins of the environmental problems the country faces today. After a general characterization of the Isthmus’ ecoregions, the author proposes a historical periodization reflecting successive human strategies of interaction with the natural world, differentiated in terms of the technologies employed and the corresponding social relations; the expression of these strategies in environmental culture and values; modes of land management; and the impact of all this on the natural world. Special attention is given to the ecological footprint of interoceanic transit from the 16th century onward, and to the search of alternatives allowing more sustainable ways of relating to nature in Panama.

The Choreography of Journeys of Magnificence: Arranging the Post-Nuptial Progress of Frederick, the Elector Palatine, and Princess Elizabeth of England from London to Heidelberg in 1613

AbstractIn examining the detailed planning and operation of an example of long-distance royal travel in the early modern period, this paper draws on contemporary documentary evidence to reconstruct the arrangements that were made for the Princess Elizabeth of England, and her new husband, Prince Frederick, the Elector Palatine, in their journey from London to Heidelberg between April and June in 1613. The progress of the royal couple is well known for its lavishness, splendour, symbolism and political significance but, in this analysis, attention is paid to the composition and character of the escort party, and the elaborate and intricate choreography that underpinned early seventeenth century European travel en fête.

Paper Modernity? Notes on an Iranian Industrial Tour, 1818

This article contributes to discussions of technology transfer in the modernisation of Iran through the study of a neglected episode in the memoirs of an early Qajar traveller to England. Arguing for the importance of papyrology to cultural historians, it deals with the irony by which in the early nineteenth century Iran was able to import modern print technology but not the new papermaking skills that printing required. By building on references in the safar-nāma of Mīrzā Ṣāliḥ Shīrāzī, the main body of the “notes” reconstructs the Mīrzā's tour of an industrialised English paper factory in 1818 and the light it sheds on Iran's struggles to develop a modern paper industry.

Road of Difficulties: Building the Lower Columbia River Highway by Michael Taylor

how those subject positions are articulated throughout themigratory experience. Indi viduals new to the subject will find an easy correspondence between personal accounts, historical narratives, and discussions of social theory. The book isorganized thematically. The first three chapters ground the ethnographic work in a broader comparative historical contextofUnited States imperialism, Mexican land reform,migration, and United States immigrationand economic policy.The lasttwo chaptersdemonstrate how Zapotee andMixtee communities construct political subjectivities through thetransborder migration experience. The remainingmiddle chapters seem to focus on differentelements of the transborder expe rience.Class borders are explored inChapter Four as both constructed and maintained through the forms of labor thatZapotee and Mixtee workers engage in.The chapter,literally, maps the chain of circumstances and migra torydecisions made through the formation of transnational labormarkets such as agricul tural and domestic work. According to Ste phen, racial hierarchies in Mexico ensure that Zapotee andMixtee communities experience land reformand neoliberal tradepolicy differ ently. Their displacement andmigration to the United States, forexample,was conditioned by theexperience of internal migration tonorth westernMexican agricultural sites and racial izationby Mexican labor recruitersindomestic settings.Stephen emphasizes, furthermore, that Mixtee experiences are also differentiatedfrom Zapotee bymonolingualism and access to edu cation, thus making it more difficultfor Mixtee workers toaccumulate enough entrepreneurial surplus capital to break out of agricultural labormarkets. Chapter Five recounts theall too familiar storyof surveillance and paranoia in undocumented migration to the United States. Stephen uses these narratives to, again, point out the experience ofbeing located among the intersectionsofboth aMexican andU.S. "hier archyofpower differences"(p. 176).Chapter Six illustrates how indigenousOaxacan women are gendered through economic and social repro duction expectations and how their lives are furthercomplicated by poverty, isolation, and neglect. Chapter Seven draws from theprevi ous material to drive home her thesis on the transborder condition, highlighting the "ways in which indigenousmigrants themselveshave invoked shared experiences of racialoppression as a basis for constructing broader panethnic and panindigenous identities" (p. 212). The personal narratives of the text and Stephen's analysismake the importantpoint that identi tiesdo not travel well and that theirrelational character requiresus tobe attentivetodifferent regions of race and patriarchy. This chapter, "Navigating theBorders ofRacial and Ethnic Hierarchies," makes a strong case for the trans border condition because Stephen illustrates how individuals are constituted as different historical actors and political subjects depend ingon thedifferent hierarchies thatpropel and integrate theirmigrant itineraries. Stephen's emphasis on the transborder,however,maybe a resultof not engaging thebody of literature on diaspora, as similarproposals have been put forth in thatarena. This oversight should not detract from the call that Stephen makes for greaterattention to the interactionofdifferent historical structures of alterityand how they condition themigrating subject. Jason Oliver Chang University ofCalifornia, Berkeley ROADOF DIFFICULTIES: BUILDINGTHE LOWER COLUMBIARIVER HIGHWAY by Michael Taylor Beaver Creek Press,Wallowa, Oregon, 2008. Photographs, maps, bibliography, index. 101pages. $19.00 paper. InRoad of Difficulties, authorMichael Taylor focuses attention on a stretchofhighway along the Columbia River long neglected bymost Reviews 497 media. The building of the Lower Columbia River Highway was every bit as difficult and importantas the more familiarColumbia River Highway. Oddly enough, the firstchampions of the roadwere bicyclistswho, seeking paths into the Portland countryside, flocked to the firstGood Roads Convention in 1896. When automobiles became practical, their owners then clamored forbetter roads. By 1912, politi cal agitation forbuilding good roads inOregon was led by Sam Hill, Simon Benson, Henry L. Pittock, C.S. "Sam" Jackson, and JuliusL. Meier, with the endorsement of Governor Oswald West. Before adequate roads were constructed, goods to and from Portland and Astoria were transported by steamers on the Columbia River. Loggers felled trees and used the river to raftthem to market until short logging rail roads were required to tap the forests farther from theriver. Obviously, a road adjacent to the river ? an area already partly cleared ? was thechosen route.The routeproved tobemore difficultthanfirstbelieved. The route through Beaver Valley required severalbridges to cross themeandering course of Beaver Creek, and the canyon passing Beaver Fallswas steep and rough. Crossing the 1300-foot Clatsop Crest at Bugby Point involved loops of road with grades up to five percent. Perpendicular rock bluffs as high as eight hundred feethad tobe stabilized against slides. Nevertheless, early travelers raved about the sweeping...

A Great Day to Fight Fire: Mann Gulch, 1949 by Mark Matthews

media. The building of the Lower Columbia River Highway was every bit as difficult and importantas the more familiarColumbia River Highway. Oddly enough, the firstchampions of the roadwere bicyclistswho, seeking paths into the Portland countryside, flocked to the firstGood Roads Convention in 1896. When automobiles became practical, their owners then clamored forbetter roads. By 1912, politi cal agitation forbuilding good roads inOregon was led by Sam Hill, Simon Benson, Henry L. Pittock, C.S. "Sam" Jackson, and JuliusL. Meier, with the endorsement of Governor Oswald West. Before adequate roads were constructed, goods to and from Portland and Astoria were transported by steamers on the Columbia River. Loggers felled trees and used the river to raftthem to market until short logging rail roads were required to tap the forests farther from theriver. Obviously, a road adjacent to the river ? an area already partly cleared ? was thechosen route.The routeproved tobemore difficultthanfirstbelieved. The route through Beaver Valley required severalbridges to cross themeandering course of Beaver Creek, and the canyon passing Beaver Fallswas steep and rough. Crossing the 1300-foot Clatsop Crest at Bugby Point involved loops of road with grades up to five percent. Perpendicular rock bluffs as high as eight hundred feethad tobe stabilized against slides. Nevertheless, early travelers raved about the sweeping view from Bugby Point. Despite problems, the road was open for travel in 1915,just twoyears afterthe firstsurveys. Taylor has thoroughly researched the eco nomic and political forcesbehind thecomple tion of thehighway.To avoid distracting read erswith footnotes, he includes short sketches of a page or two to amplify information about key figures involved in thehighway construc tion,or toadd details about difficultproblems. This techniquemakes forquick absorption of the totaleffort from 1914to 1922 ineighty-eight pages, a bibliography, and an index.A succinct chronology of themajor events pertaining to the construction of theLower Columbia River Highway adds to easy understanding of the project. An interestingchapter of twenty-two pages guides any historian who seeks to trace the remnants of the original route,mile by mile. Brief sketches of settlements along that route,many of them altered or obliterated by laterreconstruction of thehighway, are useful and entertaining. The book isnarratedmostly from theview point ofpolitical and construction figures.The author might have included additional tales from thosewho actually built the road, physi cally. The book, however, iswell-organized and the research appears sound, takenmostly from original government documents and articles in news media. Itwill likely remain thekey source of information about building theLower Columbia RiverHighway forfuture researchers. For Oregon travelers, thebook is simply a good read. JoAnnRoe Bellingham,Washington AGREATDAYTO FIGHTFIRE: MANN GULCH, 1949 by Mark Matthews University ofOklahoma Press, Norman, 2007. Illustrations, maps, notes. 280 pages. $24.95 cloth. Wildfire is as old as the convergence of dry tinderand lightning,but the serious literature devoted to this ubiquitous force of nature is only a fewdecades old.Mark Matthews's book, A Great Day toFight Fire:Mann Gulch, 1949, enriches that literatureby offeringa book that isequal parts history,journalism, historical fic tion,and epitaph forthe thirteen men who lost their lives in 1949 on the Mann Gulch fire. On the afternoon ofAugust 5,1949, fifteen U.S. Forest Service smokejumpers parachuted into an obscure canyon above theMissouri 498 OHQ vol. 109, no. 3 River, northeast of Helena, Montana, to attack a routineblaze.Within a fewhours, thefirehad "spotted"below thecrew and quickly expanded into a roiling conflagration that overran the men, claiming the livesof twelve smokejump ers and one Forest Service fire guard. In the nearly sixtyyears thathave elapsed since that fateful day, numerous attempts have been made to unravel themystery of the tragedy, including technical monographs on fire behavior, personal narratives by those who had some connection to either thedeceased or the firefightingorganization at the time, and philosophical reflectionson thenature of the tragedy itself. Probably thebest known attempt tomake sense of the loss of lifeon theMann Gulch fire isNorman Maclean's classic, YoungMen and Fire (University of Chicago Press, 1992). To make direct comparisons between Young Men and Fire and A Great Day toFight Fire would be tomiss the point ofMatthews's book. Maclean's project was one of translat ing ostensive "catastrophe" ? "terror without consolation of explanation," asMaclean puts...

Joseph Banks and the British Museum: the world of collecting, 1770-1830

Introduction 1 Banks as an Early Traveller and Collector, and the British Museum 2 Ethnography 3 Natural History and Zoology 4 Investigating Natural History: Gradually Expanding Limits After 1800 5 Earth Sciences 6 Libraries and Antiquities Conclusion

Sexualität und Souveränität — Neue Nachrichten vom Vor- und Nachleben des Leviathan-Frontispizes

The article suggests that the early travel reports on America might have been an important source of inspiration for the famous frontispiece of Thomas Hobbes’s Leviathan. Such a perspective has one central implication: Hobbes’s “state of nature” then appears to be not only a description of fundamental social, but also of fundamental sexual disorder. The “state of nature” describes a state in which sexuality is ruled by brute force. The article claims that Hobbes justifies subjection to state authority also as a measure which secures “orderly” sexual arrangements. There is a sexual contract underneath the social contract propagated by Hobbes. The article investigates the relation between sexuality and sovereignty in some of the political pictures that spring off from the picture of the Leviathan.

The Permeable World: Travel and Carnival in The Antipodes

Early modern travel writing that hyperbolically exaggerates the wonders of the new world diminishes the homeland by comparison and so disrupts the project of discursive nationalism. Richard Brome's play The Antipodes features a protagonist who is a Don Quixote figure gone mad from reading not romance but travel narratives. The play employs an interior play that stages a city called Anti-London, the carnivalesque and comic inversion of London proper, and the protagonist's return to sanity does not result from an embrace or repudiation of the exotic Other, but rather from a new flexibility towards and openness to alterity.