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6 A Note on the Text Buyse’s manuscript, composed during the trip and often en route, especially in trains and cars, is particularly difficult to read, to the point that transcription proceeds as a real decryption . It comes mainly from Maartje Theuninck who delivered with patience and courage a long and difficult work of transcription , as part of her Master’s thesis. Despite all her efforts, which joined ours and several colleagues, we were unable to identify a limited number of words, for which we propose in brackets possible if not plausible readings. We also allowed ourselves to correct typos and spelling mistakes : they were probably due to haste and Buyse has been unable , it seems, to revise his travel diary. In addition to these editorial interventions, we changed the layout of the manuscript, except for the location of the drawings, which are embedded in the narrative, as in the original, forming a dialogue with the text, whether the image is meant to illustrate or explicate, or whether it is meant to be a satirical addition. We also allowed ourselves to align the text in accord with current practices, by: - restoring upper case letters; - substituting of italics to emphasise; we have extended this practice to all the terms listed in English in the (original) French version (some are also highlighted by Buyse) and vice versa: the proper names have been left in French and were put in italics; - restoring paragraphs; - restoring punctuation; - substituting full words for abbreviations. ...

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