An independent tour for yourself and family, or for yourself alone, to less civilized or wilder places, demanded a great deal of money, as well as enterprise and energy. In the early part of the century, such a journey resembled an expedition, as related by Alexander Kinglake in his EĊthen, a popular book on eastern travel. Murray’s handbooks for the East began to appear in the late 1840s, providing help and instruction to those gentleman-scholars and others who, having seen Rome, wanted to visit the classical sites of Greece, the holy places of Palestine, or the Egyptian wonders in the Valley of the Nile. To reach such countries by steamship from England, via the Mediterranean, soon became comparatively easy, but those who decided to go overland found many difficulties in their path, though Murray (and gradually improving maps) helped them to find their way. Even so, when Harry de Windt wrote Through Savage Europe sometime before the Great War, and was asked: ‘Why “savage” Europe?’ he replied, ‘Because the term accurately describes the wild and lawless countries between the Adriatic and Black Seas.’ He might well have said the same of the area today.
