MANUSCRIPT. A hand-written journal written by a British Captain, P.S. Forlouy, during his travels to Australia and Calcutta with a long section recording his work in Burma, 1852-55, 22cm x 18.5cm, comprising 268pp. in total (most likely in a single but variable hand), the first section of 99pp. is written during his 91 day voyage to Australia where the author records his philosophical, religious and political thoughts ('I am one of those who think the tendency of all European states is towards democracy') and some pages of his hand-written poems (one of which is a rumination on his 'inability to curb my passions'). After spending 18 months in Australia, the journal then records the journey to India in a 'terrible old tub of a ship' (he has tipped-in the hand-written contract between himself and an Indian servant who will travel with him to Rangoon) but the journal fully comes alive in descriptions of his surveying work in colonised Burma (some of the villages are now 'deserted') but the work is dangerous, so he carries a pistol for fear of tigers but also of the Burmese themselves. Captain Madagan was shot in his tent while his own native retainer 'swears I have shot him in the fingers'. Meanwhile Captain D'Oyly has just returned from the jungle where he'd hung the son of 'Ging Gong Gee, a famous rebel chief'. However, there is some diversion (Mrs. F. Bouchard and Mrs.Captain Frazen, 'both well known in Rangoon, the former for high company, the latter for wild company'. (Some loose leaves, text-block cracked).