Travels with a Donkey in the Cévennes

Travels with a Donkey in the Cévennes records Robert Louis Stevenson's twelve-day walking journey through south-central France in 1878. Covering roughly 200 kilometres across sparsely populated mountain country, he carries an early sleeping bag and relies on the donkey Modestine to transport his equipment.

Modestine is less a passive pack animal than a stubborn companion whose pace repeatedly challenges Stevenson's plans. Villagers mistake him for a peddler, question his decision to sleep outdoors, and warn him about wolves or robbers. These encounters turn practical matters—food, shelter, direction, and animal care—into observations about custom and independence.

The book treats travel as an activity valuable beyond arrival. Stevenson seeks distance from ordinary comforts and finds that movement exposes both the needs of daily life and the traveler's own impatience. Readers can approach the account as an early work of recreational hiking literature, attentive to landscape, companionship, solitude, and the friction between romantic freedom and physical effort.