Travels with a Donkey in the Cevennes

Travels with a Donkey in the Cévennes is one of Robert Louis Stevenson’s earliest published works and is considered a pioneering classic of outdoor literature. Travels recounts Stevenson’s 12-day 200-kilometre solo hiking journey through the sparsely populated and impoverished areas of the Cévennes mountains in south-central France in 1878. The terrain with its barren rocky heather-filled hillsides he often compared to parts of Scotland. The other principal character is Modestine a stubborn manipulative donkey he could never quite master. It is one of the earliest accounts to present hiking and camping outdoors as a recreational activity. It also tells of commissioning one of the first sleeping bags large and heavy enough to require a donkey to carry.