Stevenson Robert. Travels with a Donkey in the Cevennes

"Travels with a Donkey in the Cévennes" (1879) is one of Robert Louis Stevenson's earliest published works and is considered a pioneering classic of outdoor literature. Stevenson was in his late 20s and still dependent on his parents for support. His journey was designed to provide material for publication while allowing him to distance himself from a love affair with an American woman of which his friends and families did not approve and who had returned to her husband in California. Travels recounts Stevenson's 12-day, 200 kilometres (120 mi) 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.