Since tourists took over from travellers, the times have not been kind to those few, rare writers who have always seen the world well for us—who filter unknown landscapes through the screen of their curiosity, who travel at a human pace, and who keep notes that allow us to take armchair journeys after them….

The English, perhaps because they look on strangenesses with a piercingly cool eye, have turned up a steady stream of enlightening travellers…. But such writings have dwindled over the last two decades, giving way to more massive studies, which sum up countries and tell us everything about them except what they are like…. Yet there are endless alluring unknowns, lacking only a traveller with time to take them in, with an uncommitted curiosity and an unjudging eye, and with an appropriate prose manner. These qualities come brilliantly together in Bruce Chatwin, whose "In...