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described by other missionaries. It included a ship's captain who was irreligious, malicious, and perhaps incompetent; a sailing ship that suffered doldrums, storms, groundings, and tensions between officers and crew; a trip that subjected the passengers to tedium; a call at a tropical port that exposed the missionary to the wider colonial world; and, at the end of the voyage, the excitement of the unknown in China.
Fryer wrote a "Diary of Voyage to China" in the form of a letter to be circulated among his parents and friends in England. The “diary” is no doubt an abstract of a journal he kept, edited for home consumption, and titled to coincide with his 22nd birthday on August 6th. Although Fryer mentions keeping a journal or a diary in several of his later letters, no such journal has surfaced.
The Diary is the earliest example of Fryer's writing to come to my attention. It is well thought out, expresses Fryer's deepest convictions, conveys a sense of confidence in himself and his mission, and describes the excitement and adventure experienced by a young man about to make his mark on the world.
The Diary starts with expressions of faith and anticipation about the future. In it one obtains a feeling for Fryer's upright character and resoluteness, characteristics that were to serve him well in his life's work as a translator, introducer of Western science and technology, advocate of the superiority of the West, and educator. During the trip he familiarizes himself with nautical terms and the names of items on the ship; he studies the Chinese language; he observes and notes the changes of climate and visible stars, discusses local flora and fauna, describes people he met and records strange fruits and vegetables. In the **diary** he comments on customs of the sea and on peculiarities of both colonized and colonizer in Batavia. Above all, he describes the terrors of a journey fraught with danger and uncertainty.
The text of the holograph Diary required editing only in details. Minor changes were made to bring dates, prices, capitalization, emphasis, and spelling into conformity with modern usage and to improve readability. Fryer's use of the apostrophe and various punctuation marks was often capricious. Usually, Fryer wrote just one run-on paragraph for each day's Diary entry. These have been separated into smaller units for ease of reading. Where a single day's entry is broken in the original into more
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described by other missionaries. It included a ship's captain who was irreligious, malicious, and perhaps incompetent; a sailing ship that suffered doldrums, storms, groundings, and tensions between officers and crew; a trip that subjected the passengers to tedium; a call at a tropical port that exposed the missionary to the wider colonial world; and, at the end of the voyage, the excitement of the unknown in China.
Fryer wrote a "Diary of Voyage to China" in the form of a letter to be circulated among his parents and friends in England. The “diary” is no doubt an abstract of a journal he kept, edited for home consumption, and titled to coincide with his 22nd birthday on August 6th. Although Fryer mentions keeping a journal or a diary in several of his later letters, no such journal has surfaced.
The Diary is the carliest example of Fryer's writing to come to my attention. It is well thought out, expresses Fryer's deepest convictions, conveys a sense of confidence in himself and his mission, and describes the excitement and adventure experienced by a young man about to make his mark on the world.
The Diary starts with expressions of faith and anticipation about the future. In it one obtains a feeling for Fryer's upright character and resoluteness, characteristics that were to serve him well in his life's work as a translator, introducer of Western science and technology, advocate of the superiority of the West, and educator. During the trip he familiarizes himself with nautical terms and the names of items on the ship; he studies the Chinese language; he observes and notes the changes of climate and visible stars, discusses local flora and fauna, describes people he met and records strange fruits and vegetables. In the **diary" he comments on customs of the sea and on peculiarities of both colonized and colonizer in Batavia. Above all, he describes the terrors of a journey fraught with danger and uncertainty.
The text of the holograph Diary required editing only in details. Minor changes were made to bring dates, prices, capitalization, emphasis, and spelling into conformity with modern usage and to improve readability. Fryer's use of the apostrophe and various punctuation marks was often capricious. Usually, Fryer wrote just one run-on paragraph for each day's Diary entry. These have been separated into smaller units for ease of reading. Where a single day's entry is broken in the original into more
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