Travels with a Donkey in the Cévennes

By Robert Louis Stevenson

My Dear Sidney Colvin,

The journey which this little book is to describe was very agreeable and fortunate for me. After an uncouth beginning, I had the best of luck to the end. But we are all travellers in what John Bunyan calls the wilderness of this world – all, too, travellers with a donkey; and the best that we find in our travels is an honest friend. He is a fortunate voyager who finds many. We travel, indeed, to find them. They are the end and the reward of life. They keep us worthy of ourselves; and, when we are alone, we are only nearer to the absent.

Every book is, in an intimate sense, a circular letter to the friends of him who writes it. They alone take his meaning; they find private messages, assurances of love, and expressions of gratitude dropped for them in every corner. The public is but a generous patron who defrays the postage. Yet though the letter is directed to all, we have an old and kindly custom of addressing it on the outside to one. Of what shall a man be proud, if he is not proud of his friends? And so, my dear Sidney Colvin, it is with pride that I sign myself affectionately yours, R.L.S.

CONTENTS

VELAY

The Donkey, the Pack, and the Pack-saddle

The Green Donkey-driver

I Have a Goad

UPPER GEVAUDAN

A Camp in the Dark

Cheylard and Luc

OUR LADY OF THE SNOWS

Father Apollinaris

The Monks

The Boarders

UPPER GEVAUDAN (continued)

Across the Goulet

A Night among the Pines

THE COUNTRY OF THE CAMISARDS

Across the Lozere Pont de Montvert

In the Valley of the Tarn

Florac

In the Valley of the Mimente

The Heart of the Country

The Last Day

Farewell Modestine!