Travel books on distant lands often include maps and illustrations to entice buyers and provide readers with graphic representations of the text. The three books featured in this display were part of the University of Mississippi’s original library holdings acquired between 1849 and 1858, during a period when scholars considered books on travel a respectable genre for learning about geography and different cultures.

The map is from an 1805 English translation of Arrian of Nicomedia’s Periplus of the Euxine Sea circa 130 AD. Written in the form of a letter to the Roman Emperor Hadrian, his travel guide describes destinations along the shore of the Black Sea that lies between Europe and Asia.

An important early Canadian artist, George Heriot received English military instruction on topographical drawing and painting before he traveled to Canada, where he held a civil service post in the colony. On view is an 1807 first edition of his Travels Through the Canadas, whose aquatint engraving were based on Heriot’s own watercolor paintings.

Constantinople in 1828 is an early work by the Scottish travel and historical writer Charles Macfarlane, published after he resided in Turkey for sixteen months. The hand-colored frontispiece portrait adds a rare spot of color and highlights the exoticism of the book’s subject matter.

Featured in this display:

1. Travels through the Canadas, containing a description of the picturesque scenery on some of the rivers and lakes: with an account of the productions, commerce, and inhabitants of those provinces. To which is subjoined a comparative view of the manners and customs of several of the Indian nations of North and South America / by George Heriot (R. Phillips, 1807)
2. Constantinople in 1828: a residence of sixteen months in the Turkish capital and provinces: with an account of the present state of the naval and military power, and of the resources of the Ottoman empire / by Charles MacFarlane (Saunders and Otley, 1829)
3. Arrian's voyage round the Euxine Sea translated; and accompanied with a geographical dissertation, and maps. To which are added three discourses, I. On the trade to the East Indies by means of the Euxine Sea. II. On the distance which the ships of antiquity usually sailed in twenty-four hours. III. On the measure of the Olympic stadium / Translated and edited by William Falconer (J. Cook, 1805)