An Inland Voyage

"After a good woman, and a good book, and tobacco, there is nothing so agreeable on earth as a river. ." In 1876, the young Robert Louis Stevenson and his friend Walter Simpson set out on an expedition along the waterways of Belgium and northern France. Their journey, in two canoes named Cigarette and Arethusa, took them from Antwerp in Belgium to Pontoise, near Paris. In an age when travelling in such an uncomfortable fashion for leisure was far from common, the two men were frequently mistaken for itinerant pedlars and were refused accomodation on more than one occasion. The sight of their canoes, however, caused great excitement in the small villages they passed along the way. Stevenson transcribed his notes from the journey to create An Inland Voyage, which, in 1878, became his first commercially published book.