And when he returned (in 1846) it is estimated that 'his travels totaled no less than a quarter of a million miles. But Holman succeeded in circumnavigating the globe, and not in the easiest way possible. Holman planned to circle the globe by going across Russia and Siberia to the east coast of Asia - a plan that ended in disappointment when the Tsar had Holman retrieved and thrown out of the country (Russia didn't want the world knowing their activities on the west coast of North America). He secured a small pension from the Navy and wrote about his travels using a device called a 'noctograph.' And between his notes and his prodigious memory, he published about his travels, and frequently his doings caused me to laugh out loud. Holman, however, met it head on and with enthusiasm - and he did it as a relatively poor man! In spite of that, he didn't mooch off friends or acquaintances, always keeping his stays short and keeping on the move. Traveling was bad enough, but as a blind man it would have been even more challenging. We understand better what it was like to travel during that time, but how Holman navigated himself. Not only do we get to know the indomitable Holman, but we learn what it was like to lose your sight. Roberts paints a picture of Holman's times. The unusual thing about Colebrook was that he was deaf! C-l-b-k' and assumed to be 'Colebrook') with whom he traveled to Germany and across the Netherlands. With his walking stick - a cane with a metal tip - he had learned to tap and navigate himself by the echoing it made. In 1819 he embarked on his first trip - to the south of France and Italy, for his health. After several years of service, Holman developed a painful rheumatism in his leg joints (by 1807) - not an uncommon affliction for sailors in such cold extremes - which later led to his blindness (in 1811).īy 1813 Holman was attending the University of Edinburgh in Scotland, first as a student of literature then of medicine. His shift was often during the night time hours, when the brutally frigid winds blew off the water, chilling the bones. The fourth son of a 'Chymist & Druggist,' or 'Surgeon and Apothecary, of genteel Practice,' who wanted his sons to be 'gentlemen,' was serving as a third lieutenant aboard a Royal Navy ship off the coast of North America. James Holman wasn't born blind, but he was born with a restlessness and and a desire for adventure. It entered into my heart, and I could have wept, not that I did not see, but that I could not portray all that I felt.' - James Holman, The Blind Traveler there was an intelligence in the winds of the hills, and in the solemn stillness of the buried foliage, that could not be mistaken. 'On the summit of the precipice, and in the heart of the green woods.

A Sense of the World by Jason Roberts