“This time they’ll believe me, I’ve got a picture,” reads an ad for a Baldaxette II camera in the April 1941 issue of Travel, a magazine once published by Robert M. McBride & Company. A few pages later, a bulletin by the National Travel Club encourages would-be tourists to vacation stateside this Spring and Summer because of “the war spreading in Europe and threatening the new regions in the Far East.”

What those “new regions” were is anybody’s guess as those were the days when travel was exotic and the world — except for Cuba, it seems — was full of mystery. (An earlier issue dated January 1939, describes the island as the “light-hearted land of the rhumba” — who knew?!)

I’ve been collecting vintage travel magazines over the last few years and I can’t get seem to amass enough copies. I recently had a few issues custom-framed as wall hangings and I’m already regretting the decision. Though the covers resemble works of art, detailing far-fetched locations and the natives that dwelled there, the real treat lies within: huge black and white photos, drawings, old-world maps and fantastical stories that proved beyond a shadow of a doubt that there was life on other continents.