After all

An Isle of Man steam train ride brings back memories of Australia. One undisputed gem of my ever-growing collection of antiquarian travel books is \´Observations of the European People\´ by Samuel Laying, Esq, published in England in 1850. It starts with a colourful description of the author\´s cross-Channel journey on an early paddle steamer: "What a world of passengers on our steamer! Princes, dukes, gentlemen, ladies, tailors, milliners, people of every rank and calling, all jumbled together. The power of steam is not confined to material objects. Its influences extend over the social and moral arrangements of mankind. Steam is a great democratic power of our age, annihilating the conventional distinctions, differences and social distance between man and man as well as natural distances between place and place."