I concur with nwhyte's review of Oct 7th, 2020. ( )

https://nwhyte.livejournal.com/3485824.html

Stevenson's first non-fiction book, a voyage by canoe through Belgium and France in 1878 with a Scottish baronet friend. It's interesting to look at the route between Antwerp and (more or less) Paris by water rather than by the more familiar road or rail. There are some nice moments of local colour. But this isn't Three Men in a Boat, and the ending is rather abrupt. ( )

This was the first book published by RLS - he had earlier writings printed in magazine, but this was his first book.
I read this after reading Travels With a Donkey which was his next work to be published. Both are "travel literature" and both relate the story of rough travels in France - a little like an early backpacker experience - where the discomfort and inconvenience is a necessary part of the story to later told.
I found this work to be less polished than Travels with a Donkey, and when I found it was the earlier piece, I was able to retrospectively see the L-plates on the author. He seems to be trying too hard to impress. But by the second half of the book, I found the writing flowed better, contained more interesting insights, and was generally more pleasing.
A good read, particularly in relation to observing the development of the author.
Read Nov 2015. ( )

The model for endless subsequent cruising memoirs, but still worth going back to for the freshness and liveliness of RLS's prose. He was a relatively early adopter of the late-Victorian touring canoe craze inspired by MacGregor, and on this trip through Belgian and French rivers he and his travelling companion (quaintly only identified in the text by the name of his boat, the Cigarette) were something of a novelty for the people they encountered, so there's a feeling of exploration even though they are rather close to home. Occasionally he allows himself to be a bit too patronising about working-class French people, but most of the time it's very agreeable to read. ( )

En 1876, Robert Louis Stevenson y su amigo Walter Simpson se embarcaron en una expedición por los canales de Bélgica y el norte de Francia. Con el relato de esta travesía, Stevenson traza el retrato de un tiempo y de un lugar cuando viajar estaa al alcance sólo de unos pocos, y, sin que apenas nos demos cuenta, deja caer reflexiones, ideas, apuntes que van calando en el ánimo del lector y que luego, al final, se revelan como lo que son: páginas llenas de vida y de gran literatura.