A Boy's Voyage Round the World

A Boy's Voyage Round the World is a world travelogue and adventure classic by Samuel Smiles. I have had pleasure in editing this travel diary, not only because it is the work of my youngest son, but also because it contains the results of a good deal of adventure travel under novel aspects, as seen by young, fresh, and observant eyes.

Samuel Smiles was a Scottish author and government reformer. Although he campaigned on a Chartist platform, he concluded that more progress would come from new attitudes than from new laws.

How the book came to be written is as follows: The boy, whose two years' narrative forms the subject of these pages, was at the age of sixteen seized with inflammation of the lungs, from which he was recovering so slowly and unsatisfactorily, that I was advised by London physicians to take him from the business he was then learning in Yorkshire, and send him on a long sea voyage. Australia was recommended, because of the considerable time occupied in making the voyage by sailing ship, and also because of the comparatively genial and uniform temperature while at sea.