Dominic Winter Auctions
Los 414
* South American Diary. A manuscript diary of a voyage to the Amazon, kept by a sailor working in the engine room of the PSS Morana, during three years' service along the coasts and up the rivers of Brazil, Peru and Paraguay, 1862-65, written in a neat hand in reporter’s notebook format, approx. 106 leaves of which approximately 66 are completed, written from both ends with some entries in the middle, marbled endpapers, contemporary calf notebook (label of Parkins & Gotto, 25 Oxford Street) with clasp, slightly rubbed, oblong 8vo (110 x 185 mm)QTY: (1)NOTE:Titled ‘A Juvenile Log of 3 Years adventures in the P.S.S. Morana in the Amazon’ at head of first page, the diary was written at the time of the war between Brazil and Paraguay. It begins with the voyage from Greenhithe in Kent in September 1862. There then follows brief but lively entries describing daily engine room and maintenance duties, carnival and sport, the occasional gun battle up river, the arrival of the mail, wages sent home, deaths on board, royal salutes, local customs, etc. ‘Times of Running down to Para with the Pastaya, from Yquitos’, [20 July:] ‘Grand doings today. Launch of the Pattumayo from the Arsenal, had a huge party on board and the President of Para, got up steam, had a run as far as the fort and back, had a Brazilian band on board enjoyed ourselves first rate, got rather muzzy you had better believe it’.
