Have you read this book?
June 25, 2010 9:25 AM   Subscribe

Can you help me identify this travelogue?

I asked this question several years ago, but never got the right answer, and I'm hoping that another crack at it will help.

The book was non-fiction, a travelogue recounting a young Australian journalist's hitchhiking journey around North and South America. One of the early events in the book is that the author travels from Vancouver, North through British Columbia to the Alaska highway and up to Alaska.

While the whole book was interesting, it is this specific passage that makes finding it again valuable to me, as it specifically mentions my home town of Prince George, British Columbia. This is also the most helpful event I can recall for dating the book as it took place specifically at the time when the Alaska highway was being opened (the author gets a ride North to Dawson with the Mayor of Prince George who is going to attend the ceremonies), presumably that sets the events either in 1943, when the highway was completed, or in 1948, when it was officially opened. The book then, is most likely a product of the 40s or 50s, certainly no earlier than 1943, and I would assume not too much later, but it might be.

The book continues (I think -- the dog part might be from another book) with the author getting a dog, who aids him in hitchhiking, travelling back south to Vancouver, then across to the East coast of the USA, then back through to the West, down through Mexico and and Central America and through the Darien Gap and on into South America, eventually ending up in Brazil for Carnival.

I got the book rather randomly -- it was set out in a pile of free for the taking books at my University in Toronto in 1998 or so. It was bound in plain orange, looked like a library binding, but not a library book (no indexes, stamps, markings, etc).
posted by jacquilynne to Writing & Language (2 answers total)
 
It might be "Walk the Wide World" (1958) by Donald Knies. I recall reading it but don't remember specifics, or where he was from originally. Hard to find any info on it online. The full text is here but it's Daisy protected so you would need a special reader to see it.
posted by iconomy at 10:27 AM on June 25, 2010


Response by poster: Sounds like an interesting book, but not the one I'm looking for. He definitely stayed in the Americas (well, the end of the book has him flying to London for a job, but it's not really part of the hitchhiking story, just the 'where did he go from here?' stuff) and there were no camels.
posted by jacquilynne at 11:10 AM on June 28, 2010


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