title: Travels with a Donkey in the Cevennes / The Amateur Emigrant
author:  Robert Louis Stevenson 
description: <b>Robert Louis Stevenson</b> (1850-94) was born in Edinburgh and studied engineering and law, before turning to writing full time. He wrote essays, travel literature, poetry, and fiction. <br /><br /><b> Christopher MacLachlan</b> is a senior lecturer in English at St Andrews. He has written widely on 18th-century English and Scottish literature, the Scottish Enlightenment, and modern Scottish literature.
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  # Travels with a Donkey in the Cevenne
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  ### Robert Louis Stevenson
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  My Dear Sidney Colvin,
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  The journey which this little book is to describe was very
  
  
  agreeable and fortunate for me. After an uncouth beginning, I had
  
  
  the best of luck to the end. But we are all travellers in what
  
  
  John Bunyan calls the wilderness of this world - all, too,
  
  
  travellers with a donkey: and the best that we find in our travels
  
  
  is an honest friend. He is a fortunate voyager who finds many. We
  
  
  travel, indeed, to find them. They are the end and the reward of
  
  
  life. They keep us worthy of ourselves; and when we are alone, we
  
  
  are only nearer to the absent.
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  Every book is, in an intimate sense, a circular letter to the
  
  
  friends of him who writes it. They alone take his meaning; they
  
  
  find private messages, assurances of love, and expressions of
  
  
  gratitude, dropped for them in every corner. The public is but a
  