William Dalrymple, the Scottish Catholic adventurer, wrote in his book From the Holy Mountain about the modern remnants of Byzantium, the following:
John Moschos did what the modern travel writer still does: he wandered the world in search of strange stories and remarkable travellers tales.
Note that Dalrymple did not say that travellers go to discover new things, or places, or people. He sets the modern travel writer on a different plane, as one who adventures through human narrative by means of travel.
That is certainly true of the opulent works of Dalrymple, for whom travelling to places is merely a starting point for an intellectual journey through past civilizations and cultures.
At his best Dalrymple delivers writings that reveal intellectual continents, through which run his riveting historical and moving personal revelations.
When Dalrymple spoke of travel writing and John Moschos, he was referring to an ancient traveller whose footsteps he would retrace in his quest, from Greece through the Levant to Egypt, to find the monasteries and cities that Moschos had previously written about. With John Moschos book, entitled The Spiritual...