QING CHINA.

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Manuscript recording a voyage to China and impressions of its major cities. An American second mate's illustrated eyewitness account of China in the immediate aftermath of the First Opium War. Sailing east on a Jardine, Matheson specie and opium runner, he becomes an old China hand and a sharp observer of early colonial Hong Kong and Shanghai, coastal trade, and maritime life.The opening section consists of diary entries kept during the outward voyage from the United States, describing a life of adventure entered almost by accident. "On the 1st of Sept. 1842 being in Boston and out of employ … I shipped in the Schr Gazell" (p. 1). The Gazelle - an Aberdeen-built schooner illustrated in watercolour at the front of the manuscript - sailed on 19 September 1842 with guns, muskets, and nine boxes of specie. Some 30 pages trace the passage with detailed daily entries, including latitudes and longitudes, weather hazards, marine life, shipboard routines, and the rituals of crossing the Equator. After rounding the Cape, the vessel encounters American traders off China and reaches Macao on 22 February 1843.The remainder of the manuscript comprises reflective recollections written later in the 1840s. Macao is judged healthy and pleasant, but eclipsed after the war by Hong Kong, now the hub of British trade. The Gazelle is reassigned to opium running along the coast, bringing higher pay and extended travel. The author recalls Hong Kong in 1844: the nightly curfew gunshot, the opium fleet

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