One of the greatest joys of travel for me is getting to places where exciting things have happened in the past. The September crossing of the Burnside River on the Canadian Barrens was just one of hundreds of threatening obstacles faced by the first Franklin expedition to survey the as yet undiscovered Northwest Passage. There was snow on the ground; the men were starving; they had many miles still to march in worsening winter weather; fewer than half ultimately survived the ordeal. Franklin, the leader of the expedition, lost his precious journal in the upset. Belanger, one of the other two in the canoe, was left standing waist-deep on a rock in the icy river, “call(ing) piteously for relief.” The strongest of the party, he lived, and the rapids have ever since been called Belanger Rapids. We shot through them one sparkling July day in 1989, trying to imagine the scene there 168 years earlier. I wondered if anything remained of the journal anywhere down there; if anybody would ever find the navigational instruments Franklin cached before crossing; if I could spot the rock where Belanger stood. Good luck with that; the rapid changes every year at ice-out.

There are dozens of books and magazine articles about the three Franklin Arctic expeditions – some written by the men on the trip – and the land is so little changed since the mid-1800s that we can find his campsites, trek across the tundra where his party staggered, and try to imagine the difference between our friendly organization and a a hierarchical military one. But you may see what I’m getting at: It’s not just the land or the river that’s fascinating; it’s the people, with their unique personalities and interactions, that make it so.

One of the greatest teachers I’ve ever known is the recently retired Dartmouth history professor Ken Shewmaker. Ken won the Distinguished Teaching Award (voted on by the students) three times. He and I have fished together many times and in many different places. If the fishing’s slow, I can ask any stupid question about the history of United States foreign policy and elicit a fascinating hour’s lecture. It’s easy to see why the students loved his class: He knows every sidebar story, every wink and nudge that moved important events to fruition, and the effects of, for example, the malarial Washington summers of the 1840s, Daniel Webster’s fine wine cellar, and collegial relationships that brought the Webster-Ashburton Treaty of 1842 to a conclusion so favorable to the United States. He tells the hidden story of acquiring the rights to build the Panama Canal (beginning with the fact that Teddy Roosevelt had happened to read a book about the ascendancy of sea power) with such good-natured irony that it’s impossible to forget. Ken also explains why the border between Vermont and Canada, which is supposed to follow the 45th parallel, actually doesn’t, and why Fort Montgomery in Lake Champlain was never invested. I can’t pass those places without recalling the stories.

I’m writing this on the eve of departure for Tierra del Fuego, where the Andes Mountains trail off at last into the ocean. Notorious for horrendous weather in the days of sailing ships and famous for its fantastic scenery and glaciers, the end of the earth was also the focus of some fascinating human stories. They’re what I’ve been reading for the last few months.

There’s Ferdinand Magellan, who completed the first circumnavigation of the globe by finding a way around the southern tip of South America. Many suspected it was there, but no one knew where (except the natives who lived there, and they didn’t care). Leaving Seville with five ships commanded by bitter rivals, he somehow managed to keep the fleet moving, found the strait now named for him, and crossed the Pacific, which turned out to be many times larger than anybody’d ever conceived it to be. His decision to convert the South Sea islanders to Christianity – or, rather, his methods – proved his fatal mistake. But one battered ship did manage to get home.

About 300 years later the HMS Beagle was carrying out hydrographic surveys along the east coast of South America when her captain became depressed, retreated to his cabin, and shot himself. Command of the Beagle passed to Robert FitzRoy, who continued the surveys. FitzRoy was a very wealthy descendant of Charles II (notice his name Fitz Roy, or “son of a king”). Fearful of the loneliness of command, he sought the company of a young gentleman of scientific bent to dine with him as an equal. And thus he found the third fascinating character to study the straits at the bottom of the world. FitzRoy exploded occasionally, banishing the gentleman from his sight, but always sent a letter of apology – on a tiny ship! – and requested a resumption of friendly relations. (Eventually, after retiring, FitzRoy himself committed suicide while at his toilet at his estate, with a razor.)

The gentleman, Charles Darwin, himself the son of a wealthy investor, was perhaps one of the most perspicacious observers of natural phenomena to grace the 19th-century era of scientific investigation. Starting with the assumption of the truth of the Biblical Creation, but unable to ignore the geological and biological evidence all around him, he slowly worked his way toward inducing what is now generally regarded as the scientific basis of the origin of species. This gentle, sickly man overturned a lot of philosophical applecarts, and somehow managed to write books that take as long to read as it took him to sail around the world! I can’t wait to see what he saw!