"Tour of the Don" by John Holland, 1837

"The Tour of the Don" was published weekly through 1836 as a series of articles in the Sheffield Mercury newspaper.  They were brought together as two volumes and re-published in 1837 with the subtitle "A series of extempore sketches made during a pedestrian ramble along the banks of that river, and its principal tributaries".

Volume 1 is available (free) as a pdf and as OCRed text on the Internet Archive and a paperback version of the pdf is on sale (e.g. on Amazon).  Volume 2 in not on the internet.

Though the author is not identified, the "Tour" is attributed (at least in the main) to John Holland (1794-1872), then the co-editor of the Mercury.  In his biography (also available in Internet Archive) a large part of chapter 11 (1835-1836) is dedicated to the writing of the "Tour".

As well as describing the river and surrounding district starting on the moors above Dunford Bridge, and ending at the River Ouse, the Tour also includes chapters about local characters such as Ebenezer Elliott ('The Corn Law Rhymer') and James Montgomery, and on local stories such as 'The Dragon of Wantley'.  His biography explains that his chapter on "John Holland" (i.e. himself) was written to disguise the authorship after his friend Samuel Roberts, the subject of a previous chapter, had guessed that Holland was 'The Tourist'.

I am currently cleaning up some extracts relating to natural history from the Internet Archive OCRed text of volume 1, and from an original copy of volume 2, and the account of its origins from his biography.  As they appear, I will include the extracts under the  'labels' Tour of the Don and John Holland.