ABSTRACT
'The literature of geography', American geographer Carl Sauer once observed,'begins with parts of the earliest sagas and myths, vivid as they are with the sense of place and of man's contest with nature' (Sauer 1925: 21). This literature extends, in modern form, to the narratives of explorers, surveyors, geographers and other storytellers, who describe journeys 'into the unknown' - adventures. 1 Since the eighteenth century, the eclectic literature of adventure has been consumed by mass reading audiences in Europe; it has fed geographical imagi nations. Adventures have charted cultural space with profound and far-reaching implications, both for those who imagine the 'unknown', in which stories are set, and also for those who live there, in geography unknown to others but known to themselves.
