A policeman in London directing three Burmese women along Elgin Avenue, London, ca. 1935
(Source: collectivehistory, via itcouldbeamazing)
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Posts tagged Travel:
Gregor MacGregor & Poyais: The Fake Colony
Gregor MacGregor was a Scottish soldier, adventurer, and coloniser who, in 1820, claimed to be ’prince’ of Poyais, a fictional Central American country. He claimed the native chieftain had given him 12,500 mile² of fertile land with untapped resources and cooperative natives eager to please. He had created a civil service, army and democratic government. Now he needed settlers and investment. He sold land for 3 shillings and 3 pence per acre, a very generous price, and also raised a £200,000 loan on behalf of the Poyais government.
He published a guidebook entitled Sketch of the Mosquito Shore, including the Territory of Poyais, descriptive of the country, supposedly written by one Captain Thomas Strangeways. It described Poyais in glowing terms, concentrating on how much profit one could get from the country’s ample resources. The region was even free of tropical diseases.
In 1822 a ship called Honduras Packet set sail to Poyais with 70 settlers aboard. Its cargo included a chest full of “Poyais Dollars”, fictional currency which many of the settlers had converted their pounds sterling to. Another ship later left for Poyais with 200 settlers.
What the settlers found was an untouched jungle; there was no settlement of any kind. They built rudimentary shelters, however, tensions began to build and tropical disease began to take its tole - one man who had spent his life savings on the trip committed suicide. A passing ship, upon hearing the settlers’ story, took them to British Honduras but 180 of the 270 settlers perished during the ordeal.
Officials in the UK were quickly notified (naval ships had to be sent out to tell five other ships that had set out for Poyais to turn back) and the whole story was published in the newspapers. McGregor, however, was already in France, trying to accumulate more investors. In fact, apparently undeterred by having caused the deaths of hundreds of people, McGregor continued the scheme until 1837. He was jailed for a week in 1826 but otherwise went unpunished. He died in 1845.
[Image Sources: 2 (Poyaisian dollar) : 3 (McGregor’s Book)]
(Source: Wikipedia)
Hameau de la reine
The Hameau de la Reine (The Queen’s Hamlet) is a rustic retreat in the park of the Château de Versailles built for Marie Antoinette in 1783 near the Petit Trianon in the Yvelines, France. Designed by the Queen’s favoured architect, Richard Mique and with the help of the painter Robert Hubert, it contained a meadowland with lakes and streams, a classical Temple of Love on an island with fragrant shrubs and flowers, an octagonal belvedere, with a neighbouring grotto and cascade. There are also various buildings in a rustic or vernacular style, inspired by Norman or Flemish designed, situated around an irregular pond fed by a stream that turned the mill wheel. The building scheme included a farmhouse, (the farm was to produce milk and eggs for the queen), a dairy, a dovecote, a boudoir, a barn, a milland a tower in the form of a lighthouse. Each building is decorated with a garden, an orchard or a flower garden. The largest of these houses is the “Queen’s House” at the center of the village. One primary purpose of the hameau was to add to the ambiance of the Petit Trianon, giving the illusion that it was deep in the countryside rather than within the confines of Versailles. The rooms at the hameau allowed for more intimacy than the grand salons at Versailles or at the Petit Trianon.
Abandoned after the French Revolution, it was renovated in the late 1990s and is open to the public.
Sources: Image 2 : Image 3 : Image 4 : Image 5
(Source: Wikipedia)
Awkward Hill, Bibury, England
The Lost Gardens of Heligan, near Mevagissey in Cornwall, are one of the most popular botanical gardens in the UK. The style of the gardens is typical of the nineteenth century Gardenesque style, with areas of different character and in different design styles.
The gardens were created by members of the Cornish Tremayne family, over a period from the mid-18th century up to the beginning of the 20th century, and still form part of the family’s Heligan estate. The gardens were neglected after the First World War, and only restored in the 1990s, a restoration that was the subject of several popular television programmes and books.
The gardens now boast a fabulous collection of aged and colossal rhododendrons and camellias, a series of lakes fed by a ram pump over a hundred years old, highly productive flower and vegetable gardens, an Italian garden, and a stunning wild area filled with primaeval-looking sub-tropical tree ferns called “The Jungle”. The gardens also have Europe’s only remaining pineapple pit, warmed by rotting manure, and two figures made from rocks and plants known as the Mud Maid and the Giant’s Head.
(Source: stumbleupon.com)
Roopkund is one of the most enticing and fascinating places of the world. Situated in the isolated corners of the greatest mountains of Himalayas at a height of about 5029 meters equalizing at about 16500 feet, it is a creation that nature has brought about in quite an interesting manner. People tend to locate it in the Indian state of Uttarakhand. Roopkund has an inscrutability and vagueness that has decepted multiple generations of fortune tellers.
Roopkund is better off known as “The skeleton lake” due to the presence of an enormous grave that holds about 300 to 600 skeletons. This discovery has revolutionized the world of ancient history ever since 1942, when a park ranger came across this mass deposition of bones. It probably is an in-accessible frozen lake that requires about four day travel to reach from the nearest locality. Recently, it has become an important spot for the visitors as they learn and conjecture this advent of science. MORE.
Harry Bensley: The Man in the Iron Mask.
Harry Bensley had a very interesting episode in his life:
He was reputedly a West-end playboy, a “bit of a rogue” and a womaniser. He had plenty of money, through investments in Russia, which allegedly earned him around £5,000 a year (a huge amount at the start of the 20th centurary).
This particular story goes like this: At a dinner one evening in 1907, at his club “The National Sporting Club, London”, two gentlemen; John Pierpoint Morgan and Hugh Cecil Lowther Lonsdale (5th earl of Lonsdale and of whom boxing’s Lonsdale Belt is named after) were arguing whether it would be possible to walk around the world without being identified. Lonsdale said it could be done, where Morgan said it could not. Morgan put up a 100,000 dollar (then £21,000) challenge, and Harry, on hearing the argument, took it up. At that time, it was the largest ever recorded bet! Many conditions were also placed on the bet, including that he was never to be identified, he had to finance himself (starting off with only one pound sterling), only take a change of underclothes, and he had to find a wife on his journey, without letting her know who he was. A particular route was planned consisting of 169 English towns and cities, plus 125 others in 18 counties around the world. Morgan also financed an escort (often referred to as The Minder) to travel with him to ensure the terms of the wager were kept!
Middle Earth anyone?
Were there no ends to this man’s talents…
Captain Sir Richard Francis Burton KCMG FRGS (19 March 1821 – 20 October 1890) was a British geographer, explorer,translator, writer, soldier, orientalist, cartographer, ethnologist, spy, linguist, poet, fencer and diplomat. He was known for his travels and explorations within Asia, Africa and the Americas as well as his extraordinary knowledge of languages and cultures. According to one count, he spoke 29 European, Asian and African languages.
Burton’s best-known achievements include travelling in disguise to Mecca, an unexpurgated translation of One Thousand and One Nights (also commonly called The Arabian Nights in English after Andrew Lang’s abridgement), bringing the Kama Sutra to publication in English, and journeying with John Hanning Speke as the first Europeans led by Africa’s greatest explorer guide,Sidi Mubarak Bombay, utilizing route information by Indian and Omani merchants who traded in the region, to visit the Great Lakes of Africa in search of the source of the Nile. Burton extensively criticized colonial policies (to the detriment of his career) in his works and letters. He was a prolific and erudite author and wrote numerous books and scholarly articles about subjects including human behaviour, travel, falconry, fencing, sexual practices and ethnography. A unique feature of his books is the copious footnotes and appendices containing remarkable observations and unexpurgated information.
He was a captain in the army of the East India Company serving in India (and later, briefly, in the Crimean War). Following this he was engaged by the Royal Geographical Society to explore the east coast of Africa and led an expedition guided by the locals and was the first European to see Lake Tanganyika. In later life he served as British consul in Fernando Po, Santos,Damascus and, finally, Trieste. He was a Fellow of the Royal Geographical Society and was awarded a knighthood (KCMG) in 1886. MORE.
Isla de las Munecas
On a dark and creepy island in the canals of Xochimico near Mexico City sits what might be the world’s strangest and scariest tourist attraction ever. However, the sad island was never meant to be a stop on tourists’ itineraries. The Island of the Dolls was dedicated to the lost soul of a poor little girl who met he fate too soon.
The Island of the Dolls (Isla de las Minecas) sits in the canals south of Mexica City and is the current home of hundreds of terrifying, mutilated dolls. Their servered limbs, decapitated heads, and blank eyes adorn trees, fences and nearly every available surface. The dolls appear menacing even in the bright light of midday, but in the dark they are particularly haunting.
Not surprisingly, the island’s origins lie in tragedy. The story goes that the island’s only inhabitant, Don Julian Santana, found the body of a drowned child in the canal some 50 years ago. He was haunted by her death, so when he saw a doll floating by in the canal soon after, he hung it in a tree to please the girl. He hoped to both appease her tortured soul and protect the island from further evil.
One doll in a tree, however, was not enough to ease Santana’s troubled mind. He continued to fish dolls and doll parts out of the canal whenever he saw them, hanging each one carefully on the island. There weren’t enough canal dolls to satisfy Santana’s tortured spirit, so he began scavenging more from trash heaps on his rare trips away from home. Later in life, he began trading his home-grown fruits and vegetables for dolls.
Many stories have been associated with the island over the years. A popular tale was that Don Julian had gone mad and believed the dolls to be real children who he pulled from the canal and tried to revive. But the truth, as told by his family members who now run the island as a tourist attraction, is that Don Julian simply believed the island was haunted by the spirit of the little girl. For reasons only known to Don Julian himself, he believed that he could make the dead girl happy and keep evil at bay by hanging discarded dolls in all of the island’s trees.
The story took a particularly sinister turn in 2001 when Don Julian drowned in the canal just like the little girl. Many people said that the dolls, inhabited by tortured spirits, conspired to murder the old man. Others believe that Santana’s death was an accident and that since his passing, the dolls have taken over his role as the island’s caretaker.
Although the island did not receive much tourist attention during Don Julian’s lifetime, it has become a well-known attraction since then. International television crews have filmed there several times, including one show that claimed to find proof the island is haunted.
Getting to the island is a long and difficult task, but walking among the creepy dolls is an experience like no other. Most, if not all, of these dolls were rejected by their previous owners for various reasons. Severed limbs and body-less heads hang side-by-side with whole, sun-bleached dolls. Mold covers some, while others are missing nearly all of their artificial hair. Spiders and insects have taken up residence in the hollow parts of most of the dolls.
Although Don Julian’s sentiment was innocent and admirable, the doll graveyard he created is undeniably creepy. Soulless eyes follow visitors as they move around the small island (which is actually a chinampa, or artificial floating garden), and many swear that they can hear the dolls whispering to them. This labor of love (or fear, as it were) has resulted in an accidental sensation amongst those who admire the bizarre and twisted side of tourism.
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