Colorado: A Summer Trip, a collection of letters by Bayard Taylor written in 1866 for the New York Tribune chronicling his trip out west. Standard travel writing of the time, not particularly interesting to anyone who doesn't live here, I wouldn't think. The author fancied himself a poet and novelist, but was best known for his travel stuff, which irritated him to no end. His writing is kind of overblown, but that's typical of the time. Teeny sample:
The weather continues intensely hot by day, with cool and perfect nights. Sometimes the edge of the regular afternoon thunder-storm overlaps Denver, and lays the hot dust of the streets. These storms are supurb aerial pictures. After they pass, their cloudy ruins become the material out of which the setting sun constructs unimaginable splendors. If I were to give the details of them it would seem like color run mad. Such cool rose-gray, such transparent gold, such purple velvet as are worn by the mountains and clouds, are fresh wonders to me every evening.
In contrast, a sample from the Winter 2004
Town & Country Travel magazine:
"When people in Whistler, the Canadian ski resort north of Vancouver, are buzzing about a new arrival, it is usually a world-class skier or maybe a chef...But this year the talk of the village is of sleeping arrangements: the very elegant ones at the recently opened Four Seasons Resort Whistler...blahblahblah gas-burning fireplaces, Frette linens, high-speed Internet access blahblahblah a hotel restaurant featuring Pacific Ocean fare such as snapper bouillabaisse and roasted black cod...Rooms from $265."
We're so jaded that we can go to some of the most beautiful places in the world and never go outside. It must have been nice to live in a time when there was still a sense of wonder (if not a sense of restrained writing).