Book excerpt: In these modern times knowledge is at our fingertips and it can sometimes feel as if there is nothing new to discover. The awe and excitement from that moment has been lost because these objects and experiences have become ordinary to us. But if we travel back in time just a few hundred years, adventurers were exploring the world during a period when most people rarely travelled further than their nearest market town. Penguins, Pineapples and Pangolins captures the wonderment these intrepid explorers felt as they struggled to record their new experiences. The eyewitness accounts in this collection reveal the reactions and thoughts of Europeans as they visited new places, tasted new foods and encountered strange animals, peoples and plants for the very first time.