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Mobile Culture Studies. The Journal 6 2o20 (Travel) Sandra Vlasta | Enlightening report versus enlightened traveller 35 England (at least unknown to travellers from abroad) that Moritz feels closest to paradise and to a world conveyed to him through English literature.19 However, it is precisely in paradise that the narrator meets Charon, as it were. Both the latter and the ambiguous, eerie atmosphere of the cave cause the mythological and preternatural impressions he describes. They render the entire episode uncanny: with reference to the German etymology of Freud’s ‘uncanny’, i.e. ‘das Unheimliche’, the cavern is an experience in which Moritz feels least at home (the German ‘Heim’). Furthermore, it becomes clear at this point that travelling brings with it this feeling of not being at home, of being ‘un-heimlich’, although Moritz, of course, was familiar neither with Freud’s understanding of the term nor with those of his predecessors, such as Friedrich Wilhelm Joseph Schelling and Ernst Jentsch. Nevertheless, Moritz’s interest in psychology, which he would later develop further in his novel Anton Reiser (Moritz 2015: 284), and the strong rela- tion between travel writing at the time and uncanny Gothic novels set abroad, such as Horace Walpole’s and Anne Radcliffe’s books (see Chard 1986), can clearly be felt in Moritz’s account as well (see Košenina 2006: 73–90). What is more, Moritz conveys this feeling to his readers both via his text and via the image chosen as its cover.20 He thereby highlights it as a fundamental experience of his journey; it becomes clear that the travelogue is as much about the traveller and his subjective impressions as it is about the voyage (Maurer 2015: 411). At the same time, the visit to the cave is recorded as an original incident that distinguishes it from all other German travelogues on England. In this way, Moritz positions his travelogue in a new tradition of travel writing, in which the experience of the travelling subject is central. Hence, the individual aspect of the enlightening project of travelling is brought to the fore. This is enhanced by the original images that Moritz creates with words, in particular that of the walker and that of the reader, which are interconnected. Moritz’s walking is presented as an unusual form of travel. At several points, the narrator recounts negative experiences that arose as a result, mentioning that many were suspicious of him precisely because he was travelling on foot. Walking was not a common mode of travel in England at the time, and those who travelled neither by coach nor on horseback were suspected of being either beggars or criminals, especially as the stagecoach service had much improved and was by then inexpensive (Maurer 2010: 18).21 Accordingly, Moritz writes: ‘Ein Fußgänger scheint hier ein Wundertier zu sein, das 19 See later quotations from Milton (Moritz 2000: 155), which Moritz frames by noting that, while travelling to and from the North of England, he believes he has encountered scenes described by Milton insofar as the hills look just like those mentioned in Paradise Lost. 20 Moritz does so tongue-in-cheek, however, as Charon turns out to be a very well-informed local guide, and in the end the cave is revealed to be big and dark but well explored, and thus not dangerous. In fact, Peak Cavern was an early tourist attraction, and Moritz mentions the income its owner earned from tourism (Moritz 2000: 148). For a short overview of Peak Cavern as an excursion site — a site also described by Thomas Hobbes, Buffon, John Macky, Daniel Defoe, Georg Forster, and Johanna Schopenhauer — see Moritz (2015: 285–290). 21 Walking is arguably seen differently today. In a recent article in The Guardian, for instance, Gail Simmons (2019) described travelling on foot as a ‘national obsession’  and presented the ‘Top 10 books about walking in Britain’ by writers such as John Hillaby (who walked the 1,100 miles from Land’s End to John O’Groats), W.G. Sebald (who walked the Suffolk countryside, which inspired a meandering intellectual expedition), and Iain Sinclair (who walked around London, following the orbital M 25). Still, all these travellers stress the idiosyn- crasy of their journey, as well as the fact that the places they visited are not actually made for walking (especially Sinclair; see also Henning Sußebach (2017), who walked from the North to the South across Germany). Hence, walkers today (unless on designated paths) are still looked upon suspiciously. Compare also the unusual pictures of refugees walking on highways in 2015 in an attempt to cross the border between Hungary and Austria on foot. Walking and slow travel has recently sparked interest in travel writing studies; see a recent special issue of Studies in 20th & 21st Century Literature (2020, Vol. 44, issue 1).