Birdseye Views of Far Lands
Public-domain ebook
Birdseye Views of Far Lands
Language: en3,467 downloads on Project Gutenberg
Subjects
In: Travel Writing
Public-domain ebook sourced from Project Gutenberg #28340.
About this book
Birdseye Views of Far Lands is a travel‑survey that strings together vivid, fact‑laden sketches of nations across the globe. The author opens with a sweeping endorsement of the work’s educational value, noting its appeal to schoolchildren, teachers, and professionals alike, and then launches into a series of “bird’s‑eye” chapters that promise concise yet colorful portraits of places from China to the Philippines, Japan to Peru. The introductory passage emphasizes that the material was originally published in a popular farming magazine and that the author’s observations were gathered during repeated voyages, often through direct contact with ordinary people. This framing sets the expectation of a compact reference that blends anecdotal travelogue with practical information about geography, industry, and culture.
The prose reflects an early‑twentieth‑century didactic tone, mixing earnest patriotism with a fascination for exotic customs. Its style is brisk, occasionally digressive, and peppered with comparative statistics and personal impressions, giving the reader a sense of standing beside the writer on foreign soil. Readers who enjoy historical overviews that combine travel narrative with encyclopedic detail, particularly educators, students, and anyone curious about the world as it was seen before the age of mass aviation, will find this work both engaging and informative.
The opening · free to read
An Acknowledgment
The contents of this book have appeared, in substance, in Successful Farming, a magazine that has a circulation of more than eight hundred and fifty thousand copies per issue, and the book is published largely at the request of many of the readers of this journal.
The author began traveling in foreign countries many years ago. Some of the countries described in the book have been visited many times and often with unusual opportunity to see places and people as they really are.
When the writer began traveling it was with no thought of ever writing for a magazine or publishing a book. It is only natural, however, that one would read what others say about the countries he expected to visit. Travel books and articles were often read in public libraries and the habit was formed of making extensive notes, sometimes entire sentences being copied in notebook without the use of quotation marks or any reference whatever to the author. It is therefore impossible to give credit where credit is often due.
No literary merit is claimed for the book. The information was gained in every possible way and the book is sent forth hoping that it will be suggestive and helpful, especially to those who find it impossible to visit foreign lands. If the eye of an author of a book or magazine article should read the following pages and fall upon a thought or sentence that is familiar it will be evidence that your book or article was very helpful to the one who writes these lines. This book is simply an effort to pass some of the worth while things on to others.
"Jas. T. Nichols" [handwritten signature.]
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