Celebrated Travels and Travelers, Volume III: The Great Explorers of the Nineteenth Century by Jules Verne

Voyages of discovery to all corners of the globe

Author Jules Verne wrote a great deal of fiction involving explorers and adventurers who traveled to exotic locales and discovered unknown lands. Of lesser renown are his nonfiction books on the subject. From 1878 to 1880 Verne published a three-volume work on world exploration entitled Découverte de la Terre, which was translated into English as Celebrated Travels and Travelers. The first two volumes recounted expeditions from ancient times to the end of the eighteenth century. In the third volume, subtitled The Great Explorers of the Nineteenth Century, Verne continues the history of exploration and discovery up to the current events of his time.

Volume III recalls intrepid journeys to every continent except Europe. English explorers search for the sources of the Niger and the Gambia rivers in Africa, American explorers venture West into the Rocky Mountains, Russian explorers scout the coasts of Alaska and Canada, German and Spanish explorers investigate the archaeological sites of Mexico and South America, French explorers chart the islands of Oceania, and everybody dips their toes in the Arctic and the Antarctic. The place names Verne uses are not always immediately recognizable. Hawaii is still the Sandwich Islands, for example, and the island of Oahu is called Waihou. Most readers with reasonable geographical knowledge, however, shouldn’t have too much trouble following the itineraries.

The African chapter is the least interesting because it often reads merely like a string of towns separated by stretches of starvation. One doesn’t learn much about the culture of the African people other than which kings treated the explorers nicely and which ones robbed and imprisoned them. Mention is made of many discoveries of new species of plants and animals, but Verne rarely gives examples of the plants and animals in question. You never know which explorers Verne is going to treat cursorily and which ones he will grant an extensive travel narrative. Verne is definitely more interested in nautical voyages than overland exploration. Lewis and Clark, for example, are passed over pretty quickly. Not surprisingly, Verne tends to favor French explorers, though in this volume he also focuses on a few Russians like Krusenstern and Kotzebue. The bulkiest section of the book is devoted to French circumnavigators, with detailed stop-by-stop narratives of the voyages of Freycinet, Duperrey, Bougainville, and Dumont d’Urville. The book closes with a chapter on polar exploration—a work in progress at the time of publication—including the discovery of Antarctica and attempts by John Ross, William Parry, and John Franklin to reach the North Pole. The most pleasurable aspect of reading this book is discovering explorers that I had never heard of or didn’t know much about. A lot of these men were household names 150 years ago but have since faded into relative historical obscurity.

I enjoyed Volume III more than the previous two volumes, perhaps because these nineteenth century explorers took better notes than their predecessors, leaving Verne more to work with. The range of exotic destinations is also widest in this third installment, and the expeditions are more scientific in nature rather than voyages of conquest and commerce. The summary nature of the work, requiring Verne to pare down a great deal of history into abridged synopses, insures that the exploration narratives always leave a little something to be desired. The material that Verne does provide, however, is enough for the curious reader to decide if it is worth pursuing more extensive biographies of these illustrious explorers. Celebrated Travels and Travelers is quite an informative and enjoyable read, and with Volume III it finishes on a high note.

Map from the book showing the “unknown regions” of the world left unexplored at the time of publication (1880).

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