On 31 July 1834 Juliusz Słowacki in the company of the Wodziński family set off from Geneva on a tour of Switzerland. He completed the first leg of journey on the same day in Bex, a village to the south‑east of Lac Leman. The following day the party visited Bex's famous salt mine and Słowacki wrote a laconic account of their excursion to the bowels of the earth in a letter to his mother. With the help of contemporary travel guides and the accounts of other travelers it is possible to fill the details of that trip. After exiting the mine, the party made their way south to Martigny.

The illustrated weekly Wędrowiec (The Wanderer), published in 1863–1906, certainly lived up to its programmatic title and published a great deal of material on geography, history of culture and travels abroad. This article discusses the texts that dealt with the ancient history of the Middle East.