I am in the midst of reading Marco Polo: From Venice to Xanadu by Laurence Bergreen.
This morning I finished up a section about Polo’s first crossing of the Pamir, the “Roof of the World” where most of the major Central Asian mountain ranges run into each other, located in the Pakistan/Tajikistan/Southwestern China area.
From the descriptions in the book plus some of the pictures I’ve seen, it seems an amazing place, but all day I have had the phrase “The Back of Beyond” floating around in my head.
Now the point of this post: I had always more or less assumed that this phrase was coined by Kipling. Apparently, tho, this is incorrect. While Kipling certainly used it, Sir Walter Scott seems to have printed it first, in 1816 in his novel The Antiquary.
Not that I read much Scott, so it’s not surprising that I didn’t know this, but I thought I would pass it along just in case the question ever comes up for you.
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January 10, 2009 at 4:54 pm
The Abbot
Robbo,
A book you might like, which is one of my all-time favorite books, is by a fellow named Fitzroy MacLean, and is called Eastern Approaches. Not sure if you’ve ever heard of it, but it is a great one. He spends a little time in that part of the world.
It’s got some great WWII sequences, too.