ABSTRACT
Travellers covered long distances; but travel accounts can be said to have had as long a journey. These accounts take the reader from myths to reality, from fabulous stories to accurate information, from information on products and peoples to customs and religion, and from a certain degree of wonder at the reality of those worlds, to a sense of (sometimes rather smug) superiority at the differences that existed. Travel and travel narratives mapped this journey from the exotic to the pedestrian, from the wonderful to the disgusting, to be subsumed into colonial formations and colonial writings, and to add substance to those perceptions.
