Travels

'Failure alone is interesting.'

~ RBCG in Cruz Alta

'The travel book of the century.'

~ Joseph Conrad on Mogreb el Acksa

RBCG travelled widely, and often adventurously, throughout his life. In his late teens and twenties he spent several years in South America. In his thirties, newly married, he visited the United States and Mexico, and lived for a short period in Spain. Chaotic and rich with the possibility of adventure, North Africa claimed him in middle age, as had South America in his youth. He returned to South America in his sixties, commissioned by the War Department to buy horses from Uruguay, and to explore the possibility of importing cattle from Colombia.

Other trips in later years took him in search of winter sun to Ceylon, the Canaries, and to Venezuela to stay with the Vestey family. His final journey to South America, in 1936, ended in his death in Buenos Aires. His early travels, in particular, profoundly shaped his world view and future political thinking. Many of his journeys are described in his writings, sometimes directly, as in Cruz Alta and Mogreb el Acksa; sometimes as semi-fictionalised accounts of incidents and encounters in his many stories and sketches.

South America

1. 1870-1872 From Montevideo to Gualeguaychu and the Santa Ana estancia where he sat out drought and civil war, rode with gauchos, contracted typhus, and made side trips around Corrientes province.

2. 1872-1874 From Buenos Aires by river to Asunçion and a commission to investigate opportunities for the commercial cultivation of mate. Paraguay was ruined by its recent deadly war with Brazil, Argentina and Uruguay, the male population decimated, the countryside rife with predators, and travel on horseback was perilous. Ruined 'missions' aroused his interest in the Jesuits.

3. 1876-1877 After an abortive attempt at ranching in Bahia Blanca with George Mansel, the pair bought horses in Durazno, Uruguay, and drove them north for sale to the Brazilian army, but the expedition stalled in Cruz Alta. They continued alone to Asunçion and back by river to Buenos Aires. The journey is described in Cruz Alta (Thirteen Stories, 1900).

Texas and Mexico

In April 1879, six months after their marriage, RBCG and Gabriela arrived in New Orleans. From there they crossed the Gulf of Mexico to Brownsville, on the Mexican border, and bought land with a view to ranching. But they had unwitt-ingly arrived at the height of the gun-slinging era. Escaping the violence they promptly sold the land and travelled to San Antonio, where in due course they joined a wagon train carrying cotton to Mexico City.

The 850-mile journey, fraught with danger from bandits and hostile indians, required them to circle the wagons every night and sleep with weapons to hand. Gabriela later described the experience in The Waggon Train (The Christ of Toro, 1908); while RBCG, in one of his most poignant stories, described the tragic flight from captivity in Mexico City of a group of Apaches, in A Hegira (Thirteen Stories, 1900).

The Cunninghame Grahams' journey through Texas and Mexico

Morocco

Cunninghame Graham's Moroccan journey to Tarudant

The maps on this page are by Willow Findlay, reproduced with permission from Don Roberto: the Adventure of Being Cunninghame Graham by James Jauncey.

RBCG had already been familiar with Morocco for several years when in 1897 he decided to try and reach Taroudant, a city forbidden to foreigners on account of tribal unrest. Disguised as a local sheikh, accompanied by a local guide and a Syrian interpreter, he set off into the Atlas Mountains to cross into the Sus valley via the Tizi 'n Test pass. But approaching the summit they were intercepted by armed men of the local warlord, the Caid of Kintafi, and held in his fortress at Thalet el Jacub for ten days, until RBCG talked his way to their release. Although his motives for the journey have never been clear – intelligence gathering for the British, seeking trade concessions from the tribes, or simply for the hell of it – the resulting book, Mogreb el Acksa (1897), broke the mould of contemporary travel writing and was hailed by many as a masterpiece. 'One of the best books of travel ever written,' said the Scottish poet Hugh MacDiarmid.