[NFBMT] James Holman from Wikipedia

[d m gina]

It is interesting they never shared if he used a cane or not or if 
anyone ever thought of that.
Thanks for sharing.

Original message:
>> From Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia



> James Holman

> Born 15 October 1786

> Died 29 July 1857 (aged 70)



> James Holman FRS (15 October 1786 – 29 July 1857), known as the "Blind
> Traveller," was a British adventurer, author and social observer, best known
> for his writings on his extensive travels. Completely blind and suffering
> from debilitating pain and limited mobility, he undertook a series of solo
> journeys that were unprecedented both in their extent of geography and method
> of "human echolocation". In 1866, the journalist William Jerdan wrote that
> "From Marco Polo to Mungo Park, no three of the most famous travellers,
> grouped together, would exceed the extent and variety of countries traversed
> by our blind countryman." In 1832, Holman became the first blind person to
> circumnavigate the globe. He continued travelling, and by October 1846 had
> visited every inhabited continent.



> Holman was born in Exeter, the son of an apothecary. He entered the British
> Royal Navy in 1798 as first-class volunteer, and was appointed lieutenant in
> April 1807. In 1810, while on the Guerriere off the coast of the Americas, he
> was invalided by an illness that first afflicted his joints, then finally his
> vision. At the age of 25, he was rendered totally and permanently blind.



> In recognition of the fact that his affliction was duty-related, he was in
> 1812 appointed to the Naval Knights of Windsor, with a lifetime grant of care
> in Windsor Castle. This position demanded he attend church service twice
> daily as his only duty in return for room and board, but the quietness of
> such a life harmonized so poorly with his active habits and keen interests,
> physically making him ill, that he requested multiple leaves of absence on
> health grounds, first to study medicine and literature at the University of
> Edinburgh, then to go abroad on a Grand Tour from 1819 to 1821 when he
> journeyed through France, Italy, Switzerland, the parts of Germany bordering
> on the Rhine, Belgium and the Netherlands. On his return he published The
> Narrative of a Journey through France, etc. (London, 1822).



> He again set out in 1822 with the incredible design of making the circuit of
> the world from west to east, something which at the time was almost unheard
> of by a lone traveller, blind or not - but he travelled through Russia as far
> east as the Mongolian frontier of Irkutsk. There he was suspected by the Czar
> of being a spy who might publicize the extensive activities of the Russian
> American Company should he travel further east, and was conducted back
> forcibly to the frontiers of Poland. He returned home by Austria, Saxony,
> Prussia and Hanover, when he then published Travels through Russia, Siberia,
> etc. (London, 1825).



> Shortly afterwards he again set out to accomplish by a somewhat different
> method the design which had been frustrated by the Russian authorities; and
> an account of his remarkable achievement was published in four volumes in
> 1834-1835, under the title of A Voyage Round the World, including Travels in
> Africa, Asia, Australasia, America, etc., from 1827 to 1832.



> Holman was elected a Fellow of the Royal Society (UK), and of the Linnaean
> Society (UK). Charles Darwin, in The Voyage of the Beagle, cited Holman's
> writings as a source on the flora of the Indian Ocean. On Fernando Po Island,
> now part of Equatorial Guinea, the British Government named the Holman River
> in his honor, commemorating his contributions to fighting the slave trade in
> the region during the 1820s.



> His last journeys were through Spain, Portugal, Moldavia, Montenegro, Syria
> and Turkey. Within a week after finishing an autobiography, Holman's
> Narratives of His Travels, he died in London on 29 July 1857. This last work
> was never published, and likely has not survived.



> While his early works were generally well received, only partially as a
> novelty, over time competitors and skeptics introduced doubt into the public
> consciousness about the reliability of Holman's "observations". In a time
> when blind people were thought to be almost totally helpless, and usually
> given a bowl to beg with, Holman's ability to sense his surroundings by the
> reverberations of a tapped cane or horse's hoof-beats was unfathomable.



> See also

> O'Byrne, William Richard (1849).

> "Wikisource link to Holman, James".

> Wikisource link to A Naval Biographical Dictionary.

> John Murray. Wikisource.



> References

> Roberts, Jason (2006). A Sense of the World: How a Blind Man Became History's
> Greatest Traveler, HarperCollins Publishing, New York, NY, 2006 ISBN
> 0-00-716106-9  This article incorporates text from a publication now in the
> public domain:



> Chisholm, Hugh, ed. (1911). "Holman, James". Encyclopædia Britannica. 13
> (11th ed.). Cambridge University Press. p. 616.



> External links



>        Wikiquote has quotations related to: James Holman

>        Wikisource has the text of the 1911 Encyclopædia Britannica article
> Holman, James.

> Works by James Holman at Project Gutenberg

> Works by or about James Holman at Internet Archive

> A Holman site on Jason Roberts' web-site

> Audio excerpts of Roberts' book

> "Tales of a Blind Traveler" on NPR 19 August 2006 (includes audio)



> Joy Breslauer, President

> National Federation of the Blind of Montana

> Web Site: http://www.nfbofmt.org <http://www.nfbofmt.org/>



> Live the life you want



> The National Federation of the Blind is a community of members and friends
> who believe in the hopes and dreams of the nation’s blind. Every day we work
> together to help blind people live the lives they want.



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