Information Sheet

 

R            Robertson, A. McI.

53                    Journal, 1856-1857.

                                    Two folders.

 

 

This is an account of a journey through Europe, the Mediterranean, Egypt, the Sinai, and Pal­estine in 1856-1857.  The author was an American from Philadelphia, Pennsylvania.

The author of this detailed travel journal was A. McI. Robertson.  Although Robert­son wrote page after page about his travels, he left very little information about himself.  A fragment of an envelope addressed to “Archibald Robert...  Walnut ...  Phila...,” and the author's compari­sons of locations in Europe with Philadelphia are the only indications of the writer's identity.  The 1856 City Directory of Philadelphia listed Archibald Robertson, 101 Walnut Street, as treas­urer of the N.O. Canal & Navigation Company.  Robertson traveled with four companions.  They were Au­gustus Graham Coleman, Samuel Richards Colwell, J[ohn] Hamilton Slack, and “Doctor,” whose name was not recorded otherwise.

Robertson recorded his travels in a “Manifold Writer,” a self-contained portfolio that util­ized carbons and tissue paper to make multiple copies.  He apparently sent the originals home in lieu of letters, and only the carbon copies remain in the portfolio.  Evidently to conserve paper, Robertson used some of the tissue sheets twice, writing horizontally first, and then vertically along the length of the paper.  About thirty pages of the journal exist in this crosshatched man­ner.  They are ex­ceedingly difficult to read.

The first pages in the portfolio are fragments of a letter written to Robertson’s par­ents de­scrib­ing his voyage across the Atlantic and his arrival in Liverpool, England.  The first journal en­try is dated 7 September 1856 at London.  Robertson and his fellow travelers spent the next two months touring Great Britain and the Continent, visiting Belgium, Holland, Ger­many, Aus­tria, and Italy.  The party then crossed the Mediterranean, landing at Alexandria, Egypt, after an in­termedi­ate stop at Malta.  They traveled southward to Cairo, visited the pyramids, and then en­gaged a boat for a round-trip voyage on the Nile River to Thebes, with stops en route at Aswan and Memphis.  Upon returning to Cairo, the party hired guides and camels and set off eastward across the desert for Mount Sinai.  The route took them through Suez, Akaba, and Petra.  From Mount Sinai they went to Jerusalem, arriving on 30 April 1857.  They spent two weeks visiting places of biblical re­nown, and then went to Beirut, Lebanon, to board a French steamship bound for Marseilles and Lyons.  At Lyons, Robertson took a train for Geneva, Switzerland, where he spent a day before returning to Paris.  Robertson made his last journal entry on 6 July 1857 at Paris, recording his purchase of new clothes to replace his travel-worn wardrobe.

Robertson's journal is a highly detailed and entertaining account of a young Ameri­can's “Grand Tour” which lasted nine months and covered thousands of miles.  Robertson commented at some length on nearly all the places he visited, including all the capitals of Europe, the sea­ports of the Mediterranean, Egyptian and Roman ruins, and the sites and cities of the Old and New Testa­ments.  He was enthralled with the starkness of the Sinai, but he commented also on the bad water, Bedouin bandits, and sandstorms.  He considered Berlin to be the finest capital city in Europe and admired the German government despite its absolute monarchy.  He was least impressed with Rome and Italy, where, he claimed, there was not an honest man from the richest banker to the poorest peasant.  His opinion was undoubtedly af­fected by his low opinion of Ro­man Catholicism.  Writing of Catholic shrines he had visited in Jerusalem, Robertson asserted that they amounted to no more than “common humbug on a grand scale.”

Accompanying the journal is a typescript that is considerably easier to read than the origi­nal, especially those pages that were written in crosshatched fashion.  Also available is an ab­breviated itinerary of Robertson's travels.  The itinerary is filed in the Information Folder.

 

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