We are all travelers in the “wilderness of the world” – travelers with a donkey.’ So Robert Louis Stevenson wrote to a friend on completing this enchanting account of a journey in rural France in 1878. Alone with his pack-donkey Modestine, and showing total disregard for discomfort, Stevenson relishes to the full his walking tour of the Cévennes. Freedom was the important thing: ‘I bless God that I was free to wander, free to hope, and free to love.’ This diary will find many kindred spirits.
