Manuscript account of his passage to China and early attempts to establish a medical practice. GREEN, John Plimpton.

An account highlighting the hopefulness and uncertainty experienced by many who ventured east to seek their fortune and the importance of social connections to professional advancement. Green had a successful medical career in China and Chile but, a newcomer to Chinese shores, finds his prospects far from guaranteed. Born into a prosperous New England family, Green (1819-1892) graduated from Jefferson Medical College in 1841 and travelled to China on board the Ronaldson, a bark operated by Gordon and Talbot and laden with cloth and furs for the Asia market. The manuscript, almost certainly in Green's hand, appears to either be excerpts from letters he sent home or one continuously kept account. It opens with the ship's departure on 22 April 1843 and ends with an entry for 24 September, approximately three weeks after the ship reached Hong Kong. He fares well on the voyage - better than the chickens in the ship's coop - and is occupied learning Chinese and befriending and treating members of the crew. They include the young Frederick Law Olmsted (1822-1903), whose later success as a landscape architect was rooted in his variety of experiences as a younger man. Around halfway through, they reach the Sunda Strait (Indonesia), guns at the ready to ward off the menace of piracy. At Java, Green sketches the Dutch master attendant's house, describes the harvesting of coffee, and writes of the symbols of colonial rule. On 2 September, the ship reaches Green Island, Hong Kong. He has letters of introduction to local movers and shakers - Elijah Coleman Bridgman, the first American Protestant missionary in China, and the Baptist minister J. Lewis Shuck - staying with them for his first three days and enjoying their "very kind and attentive" hospitality, despite the "great want of comfort in the buildings, being without cellars and situated upon the side of a very steep hill [and] very damp in consequence" (2 September). He explores the shops of Victoria, hearing that they are much inferior to those in Canton, and goes hiking with Bridgman, but business and networking are his ever-present preoccupations. The last seven pages are peppered with the names of acquaintances and contacts - such as the outspoken merchant Charles William King (Olyphant & Co.) - who might help him find his feet. The narrative breaks off with his prospects looking "quite dubious" (15 September), the only cause for hope being a possible co-partnership with a Canton-based English doctor, Samuel Marjoribanks. In the event, Green eventually practised medicine in Whampoa for five years, no doubt benefiting from the rapid increase in the number of foreigners in south China following the opening of the treaty ports. This account humanizes the beginnings of that success story. 18 sheets (c. 300 x 185 mm), all but last side completely filled in neat manuscript. Old horizontal creasing, light nicking and toning: very good.