"I have never been able to understand why a certain kind of traveler ever travels. I mean the one who in Mexico is constantly talking about the way things are done at home; who spends his time describing and praising in detail the food he has eaten, the baths he has taken, the kind of service he has had-at home. I have never been able to see why, if he wants everything in Mexico or any other country to be just exactly like what he has at home, he should ever leave home at all."
----Bess Garner

Personal Motives
Political Motives
Educational/Scientific Motives
Adventure
Sources

"I have my reasons…"
Traveling to an area for personal reasons would include visiting family or friends or having an interest in the indigenous culture. (Traveling purely for the thrill would be classified as adventure seeking.) William Marshall Anderson, for example, traveled to Mexico towards the end of the American Civil War to meet up with some confederate friends who had fled the United States. His journal was in fact intended for "the eyes of [his] family and particular friends, to be read in confidence."

Bess Garner also had her own reasons for traveling to Mexico. "That is exactly what this little book is-a few personal notes in the margin for the story of Mexico…they are often trivial, sometimes flippant, very often ignorant…but always personal…" After viewing a show by the Mexican Players of Padua Hills in Claremont, California, Bess became fascinated with the Mexican culture, though she knew little about it. "…the simple, vivid, and colorful folk background of Mexico offers to the people of the United States not only an interesting entertainment but a new understanding and appreciation for the cultural roots of their Mexican neighbors." She wished to gain a better understanding herself of this "vivid" culture, and so traveled to Mexico in order to gain personal experience.

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It's All About the Politics…
Politics and other business affairs can cause one to travel to another region. This can include maintaining relations between cities, states, or countries. Although Theodore Roosevelt traveled to Brazil for several reasons, he is a prime example of a traveler with a political motive. In 1913, Roosevelt traveled to Brazil because he was "invited by the government…to speak on the political reforms he had championed as a third-party candidate in the 1912 U.S. Presidential Election."

The Science Behind it…
One of the most popular motives for travel in the accounts we have dealt with is education, and even more specifically, scientific study. This type of account is very different than most other kinds. Scientific accounts tend to lack detailed information about the food, culture, housing, and people that inhabit the area. However, it is not uncommon for a traveler with a more scientific approach to note the flora and fauna of new lands. This was the focus of Konrad Guenther's journey, whose love for nature inspired him to travel to Brazil in the 1920s, with the intention of producing a detailed guide of the animals and plants that he found there. This guide would also "make it easier for subsequent explorers and scientists to find their way about, since in addition to giving the derivation and affiliation and peculiar features of plants and animals, it contains references to the principal authorities for those who desire to stud the various species more particularly." Future scientists and travelers would be able to use Guenther's guide to Brazil in their studies.
Jean Louis Rodolphe Agassiz was another scientist who traveled to Brazil, however, he was in search of evidence to prove Cuvier's Catastrophism Theory B. Agassiz strongly disagreed with Darwin's Theory of Evolution, instead favoring the notion that earth goes through periodic catastrophes that cause new species of animals and plants to appear (Cuvier's Catastrophism Theory B). Whereas some scientists believed that the last catastrophe was the Biblical Flood, Agassiz hypothesized that the most recent catastrophe was the glaciers, which he thought had been formed instantaneously all over the world. His attempt to find evidence of glaciers in Brazil was, however, unsuccessful.

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Adventure-Seekers
Those who travel purely for the thrill of experiencing new things can be labeled "adventure seekers". Whether the trip is planned or spontaneous, the adventure seeker keeps himself busy with new and exciting exploits of all kinds. For example, Theodore Roosevelt kept himself busy after his lectures by going into the Amazon (in Brazil) to hunt. He also wanted to descend down parts of the Amazon that were "utterly unknown to topographers."
Harry A. Franck similarly sought out adventure, and was "a self-proclaimed vagabond." He lived for day-to-day experiences, and his desire to travel seems inspired by his desire for adventure. His experience in travel was not limited to his trip to Mexico; in fact, he had written many other travel accounts (ie, A Vagabond Journey Around the World) and carried an abundance of knowledge about other cultures.
An undergraduate who had once taken a course in the discovery, conquest, and settlement of Spanish America, and who retained a gift for languages, David Maybury-Lewis "marveled" at the first-hand accounts of the American Indians.

Greatly longing for the opportunity to satisfy his curiosity by actually meeting the native peoples, he once "wandered into an international conference" while at Cambridge, which was being held by anthropologists specializing in American studies. Testing the waters, he inquired as to how a "young Englishman with no money could go out to the Americas and do anthropological research." His inquiries were entertained but momentarily, and he recieved little more than sympathetic glances and good wishes...from the majority in attendence. One German professor, however, did listen with acute interest to his desire to travel, and assured him that there was an enormous amount of work for the undertaking in the "interior." Relating to Lewis that he himself would soon be venturing south and west, he invited him to accompany him as his student, although he proposed no remedies for the financial constraints. Perplexed as what to do, Lewis ultimately decided to accept the offer: "Nevertheless the idea, with its piquant associations of the un-mapped and the unknown, appealed to me. Out of this slightly surrealist conversation came a succession of events which was to land me six years later together with my wife and a small baby in the midst of one of the most notoriously bellicose tribes of Mato Grosso."

Wallace Gillpatrick is another spontaneous and adventurous traveler who "from boyhood felt the lure of Mexico. Reared in California, where the romance of the early Mexican days still lingers, and where the prodigality of nature and of life are in keeping with Mexican tradition, I [Gillpatrick] ardently dreamed of this Spanish-American southland." Years later in 1905 Gillpatrick followed through on this childhood dream and journeyed into Mexico. His original intention in traveling to Mexico was to visit some mines that an old friend of his owned. The plan was that they would meet at a designated mine and travel the mining region together. Gillpatrick felt such an attatchment to the country that he stayed for a year in the mining region and then traveled around Mexico for another five years.


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Sources

Agassiz, Professor and Mrs. A Journey in Brazil. 1868. University Press: Welch, Bigelow, & Co., Cambridge. Boston, 1868.

Anderson, William Marshall. An American in Maximilian's Mexico 1865-1866. Ed. Ramon Eduardo Ruiz. San Marino: The Huntington Library, 1959.

Bess Adams Garner, Mexico: Notes in the Margin. Houghton Mifflin, Boston, 1937.

Gillpatrick, Wallace. The Man Who Likes Mexico. New York, NY:The Century Company, 1912.

Guenther, Konrad. A Naturalist in Brazil.Boston, New York, Houghton Mifflin Company, 1931.

Harry A. Franck. Tramping Through Mexico, Guatemala and Honduras: Being the Random Notes of an Incurable Vagabond. New York: The Century Co, 1916.

Kozar, Richard. Theodore Roosevelt and the Exploration of the Amazon Basin. Philadelphia: Chelsea House Publishers, 2001.

Maybury-Lewis, David. The Savage and the Innocent. Beacon Press, Boston: 1956.

Ornig, Joseph R. My Last Chance to be a Boy. Baton Rouge: Louisiana
State University Press, 1994.

Images from:

William Marshall Anderson

Philosophy, Education, Culture: Art

 

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