An Aide-de-Camp's Recollections of Service in China: A Residence in Hong-Kong, and Visits to Other Islands in the Chinese Seas

This two-volume work, published in 1844, is a memoir of time spent in China by Captain Arthur Cunynghame (1812-84), aide-de-camp to Major-General Lord Saltoun, Commander of the East India Company's troops in China. In Volume 2, the author is invited to visit Ning-po, recently given the status of a 'treaty port', and he subsequently travels to both Hong Kong and Canton (Guangzhou), both now open to international trade. Cunynghame next accompanied Saltoun to the Philippines, and gives a fascinating account of life in Manila. Ordered home in 1844, he travelled via Hong Kong and Malaya to Calcutta, then south to Madras (Chennai) and Ceylon (Sri Lanka), and eventually home to England, via the Red Sea, the Sinai Desert, Egypt and the Mediterranean, noting the curiosities among both people and places with undiminished zest.