Wednesday, May the 19th, 2004
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Ford every stream. Follow every rainbow, with a cutlery canteen, just as any good Victorian explorer would do. Those people knew precisely how to equip themselves for their often arduous journeys. Here, for example, is some advice from H H Johnston's Hints On Outfit of 1889: “I cannot too strongly recommend all travellers to supply themselves with quantities of light literature. By ‘light’ I do not mean frivolous in character, but devoid of great material weight, so that it can be easily packed and readily transported. There are a great many standard works now published in cheap editions in paper covers, and these, together with a supply of good novels, sensational tales, old magazines, and reviews, should be taken. It is astonishing with what pleasure [the traveller] will peruse the veriest rubbish in the wilderness, and really crave for anything that may serve to distract his mind at times from the savagery around him.” Utilitarian to a fault. Equally diverting is the strangely assorted cargo taken, a hundred years before, by Jean-Pierre Blanchard and his pals on the first Channel crossing by hot air balloon: a barometer and compass, thirty pounds of ballast, flags, anchors, cork jackets, a packet of pamphlets, a bottle of brandy, some biscuits and apples, two useless silk-covered aerial oars, an equally useless rudder, and a moulinet—a sort of hand-operated revolving fan with no apparent purpose. I would dearly love to know what those pamphlets were… exciting works by an 18th century ur-Dobson, most likely.