Project Gutenberg 2025-07-10 Public domain in the USA. 408 Williams, Martha Noyes 1813 1879 Williams, H. Dwight, Mrs. Williams, Mrs. H. Dwight Williams, Mrs. H. D. Bryant, William Cullen 1794 1878 Bryant, W. C. (William Cullen) A year in China : $b and a narrative of capture and imprisonment, when homeward bound, on board the rebel pirate Florida $aNew York :$bHurd and Houghton, $c1864. Charlene 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.) "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.) https://archive.org/details/yearinchinaandna00will/page/n3/mode/2up 20220813114513williams 1864 US Reading ease score: 59.1 (10th to 12th grade). Somewhat difficult to read. en China -- Description and travel Capture at sea -- Personal narratives Piracy -- Personal narratives DS Text Category: Biographies Category: Travel Writing Category: American Literature 578640 2025-07-30T08:21:07.367451 text/html 552600 2025-07-10T18:15:16 text/html 445936 2025-07-30T08:21:15.733446 application/epub+zip 443890 2025-07-30T08:21:08.978436 application/epub+zip 413339 2025-07-30T08:21:08.109470 application/epub+zip 1189609 2025-07-30T08:21:20.848403 application/x-mobipocket-ebook 1144891 2025-07-30T08:21:14.925456 application/x-mobipocket-ebook 529386 2025-07-30T08:21:06.699493 text/plain; charset=us-ascii 509329 2025-07-10T18:15:16 text/plain; charset=us-ascii 15156 2025-07-30T08:21:21.034381 application/rdf+xml 16605 2025-07-30T08:21:08.315453 image/jpeg 2729 2025-07-30T08:21:08.212450 image/jpeg 595113 2025-07-30T08:21:07.428435 application/octet-stream application/zip Archives containing the RDF files for *all* our books can be downloaded at https://book.klll.cc/wiki/Gutenberg:Feeds#The_Complete_Project_Gutenberg_Catalog en.wikipedia