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001			76474
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040			_aUtSlPG
041		7	_aen _2iso639-1
050		4	_aDS
100	1		_aWilliams, Martha Noyes, _d1813-1879
245	1	2	_aA year in China
264		1	_aSalt Lake City, UT : _bProject Gutenberg, _c2025
300			_a1 online resource : _bmultiple file formats
336			_atext _btxt _2rdacontent
337			_acomputer _bc _2rdamedia
338			_aonline resource _bcr _2rdacarrier
500			_aRelease date is 2025-07-10
508			_aCharlene Taylor, Craig Kirkwood, and the Online Distributed Proofreading Team at https://www.pgdp.net (This file was produced from images generously made available by The Internet Archive/American Libraries.)
520			_a"A year in China : and a narrative of capture and imprisonment, when homeward…." by Mrs. H. Dwight Williams is a travel memoir and captivity narrative written in the mid-19th century. It follows an American woman’s year-long journey to and within China, recorded en route through African and Indian Ocean ports, with keen observations on places, peoples, missions, and colonial life, and culminates in her capture aboard the Confederate raider Florida while returning home. Expect vivid sea passages, ethnographic sketches, and city portraits of Hong Kong, Macao, Canton, and Swatow from the perspective of the wife of a customs commissioner. The opening of the work begins with an introductory note by William Cullen Bryant explaining the new American interest in China, the foreign customs service that employs the author’s husband, and a hint of the captivity episode that closes the narrative. Chapter I recounts departure from New York on the steamer Poyang, early seasickness and shipboard devotions, coaling at the Cape Verde island of St. Vincent (where the ship is briefly mistaken for a rebel cruiser), glimpses of the West African coast near Liberia with fishermen bartering from canoes, a sodden equatorial crossing, and detailed impressions of St. Paul de Loanda—its forts, fading slave-trade legacy, mixed languages, coerced labor gangs singing as they coal, and vigilant British consular oversight. Chapter II covers a bureaucratic delay at Luanda, a brisk run down the desolate Namib coast, the odd noon “shadowless” moment under the sun, fog-bound entry to Table Bay, Sunday worship at St. George’s Cathedral with a choir of Kaffir boys, a roaring “black southeaster,” and a day of exploring Cape Town’s shops, racially mixed civic life, the government-backed Kaffir College (workshops, chapel, and curriculum), the museum and library (notable natural history and ethnographic displays), botanical garden, industrial schools, and ambitious public works. At the start of Chapter III the ship leaves Cape Town past the Cape of Good Hope, meets outbound vessels, crosses a swath of “whale’s feed” and an American whaler hungry for news, and glides into the Indian Ocean under brilliant southern skies and the Southern Cross while nearing Madagascar—the point at which the excerpt ends. (This is an automatically generated summary.)
534			_pOriginally published: _cNew York: Hurd and Houghton, 1864
653			_aChina -- Description and travel
653			_aCapture at sea -- Personal narratives
653			_aPiracy -- Personal narratives
700	1		_aBryant, William Cullen, _d1794-1878
856	4		_uhttps://archive.org/details/yearinchinaandna00will/page/n3/mode/2up
856	4	0	_uhttps://www.gutenberg.org/ebooks/76474
999			_c117199 _d117199