Albert Dabadie Bache maintained several diaries that ought to interest scholars investigating the Civil War, naval history, and Asia--especially China and Japan--in the nineteenth century. The first volume recount his tenure as captain's clerk aboard the U.S.S. Hartford in 1862 (1/1-11/28). Bache provides an on-the-ground view of the Civil War that traverses the American North and South. The first half of the journal documents his life at camps in the South, including Baton Rouge, Cape Hatteras, New Orleans, and Vicksburg, and, starting in late-September, he returns to the northeast, first to New York and then to Philadelphia. In addition to providing a glimpse at soldier camps—especially in Baton Rouge (8/8)—Bache records at least one instance of Yellow Fever.; The latter two diaries (from 1867 and 1868 respectively), document his service as assistant paymaster on the U.S.S. Iroquois, of the Asiatic Squadron. After leaving from the Brooklyn Navy Yard (2/1/1867), Bache immediately confronts a hurricane (2/11/1867). Bache had an opportunity to take numerous shore leaves across Brazil, South Africa, Madagascar, Oman, Singapore, China, Japan, and the Philippines: he visits Rio de Janeiro during Holy Week (April 1867), offers extended descriptions of Saint Augustin that spills across multiple entries (7/9-7/22/1867), and attends a Chinese opera in Singapore (10/10/1763). His 1868 journal continues to narrate his travels in Asia, most especially Japan. Bache makes good use of this volume's larger pages, recording extended accounts of the cities Hakodate, Hyogo, Nagasaki, Niigata, Osaka, and Yokohama. After spending most of the year traveling Japan's coast--he doesn't leave for China until 11/16/1868--he closes his volume with a brief visit to the Philippines.
 

The Cassin diaries are contained in six volumes. The first, spanning 1865-66, documents his travel by steamer. Cassin records crossing the equator (7/30/1865), visiting a volcano at Cape Verde (7/25/1865), and arriving in Brazil. Enterprising researchers might research his course using the longitudes and latitudes he records throughout this volume.
 
The second volume picks up more than a year later and commits significant attention to the medical profession. The first entry voices concern about the medical department at the University of Pennsylvania (12/10/1868), and subsequent pages enclose copies of letters from 1869, including his committee appointments, especially Assistant Surgeon in the Navy (4/2/1869). Sequential entries begin in earnest on 5/6/1869, when Cassin recounts his travels aboard the brig Ohieflaua from the Chicago Harbor to Lake St. Clair.
 
Cassin's third and fourth volumes are less descriptive but remarkable for the extent of his travels. In his 1870 "New York" diary, Cassin notes another journey to Brazil in June, South China Sea in August, and Hong Kong and Shanghai in September. His 1870-71 diary dovetails with the latter, recording a trip to Rio de Janeiro (6/6/1870) and undated notes pertaining to a voyage to South Africa. Once again, Cassin captures many longitudes and latitudes.
 
The "Clayton's Octovo Diary 1872" is perhaps the richest from an ethnographic perspective. Cassin provides detailed accounts of visits to Key West (2/10/1872), Havana and Matanzas (between February and April 1872), and even a brief reflection on the act of journaling. "A diary is something like a resolve to call professionally on a dentist
 
you may keep it, but the chances are much in the favor of your putting it off," Cassin observes on 4/26/7182. "Diary writing is almost the stupidest thing that I know of, unless one can make a writing task in no other way." Between May and June 1872, he travels throughout the Caribbean, furnishing descriptions of the peoples and villages he encounters. Interested researchers will find a particularly evocative entry of Key West society women in a 6/21/1872 quotation below.
 
A Pocket Diary dated 1875, finds Cassin landlocked, maintaining a more traditional journal of meetings, calls, letters, and weather conditions. The volume opens in St. Louis where he has apparently purchased a home, and it is not until September that he begins to travel again. That fall he returns to Brazil (11/6) and visits Uruguay (12/1).

Serving as a U.S. Navy physician, Charles Luke Cassin traveled extensively, recording firsthand accounts of Brazil, Canada, South Africa, the South China Sea, and the Caribbean during the postbellum period. His six-volume journal, which spans 1865-1875, offers glimpses at those far flung locations and the various peoples who inhabited them. Cassin's journals ought to appeal to a wide range of researchers, including those interested in the history of seafaring, the West Indies, ethnography, and late-eighteenth-century medical practices.
 
The Cassin diaries are contained in six volumes. The first, spanning 1865-66, documents his travel by steamer. Cassin records crossing the equator (7/30/1865), visiting a volcano at Cape Verde (7/25/1865), and arriving in Brazil. Enterprising researchers might research his course using the longitudes and latitudes he records throughout this volume.
 
The second volume picks up more than a year later and commits significant attention to the medical profession. The first entry voices concern about the medical department at the University of Pennsylvania (12/10/1868), and subsequent pages enclose copies of letters from 1869, including his committee appointments, especially Assistant Surgeon in the Navy (4/2/1869). Sequential entries begin in earnest on 5/6/1869, when Cassin recounts his travels aboard the brig Ohieflaua from the Chicago Harbor to Lake St. Clair.
 
Cassin's third and fourth volumes are less descriptive but remarkable for the extent of his travels. In his 1870 "New York" diary, Cassin notes another journey to Brazil in June, South China Sea in August, and Hong Kong and Shanghai in September. His 1870-71 diary dovetails with the latter, recording a trip to Rio de Janeiro (6/6/1870) and undated notes pertaining to a voyage to South Africa. Once again, Cassin captures many longitudes and latitudes.
 
The "Clayton's Octovo Diary 1872" is perhaps the richest from an ethnographic perspective. Cassin provides detailed accounts of visits to Key West (2/10/1872), Havana and Matanzas (between February and April 1872), and even a brief reflection on the act of journaling. "A diary is something like a resolve to call professionally on a dentist
 
you may keep it, but the chances are much in the favor of your putting it off," Cassin observes on 4/26/7182. "Diary writing is almost the stupidest thing that I know of, unless one can make a writing task in no other way." Between May and June 1872, he travels throughout the Caribbean, furnishing descriptions of the peoples and villages he encounters. Interested researchers will find a particularly evocative entry of Key West society women in a 6/21/1872 quotation below.
 
A Pocket Diary dated 1875, finds Cassin landlocked, maintaining a more traditional journal of meetings, calls, letters, and weather conditions. The volume opens in St. Louis where he has apparently purchased a home, and it is not until September that he begins to travel again. That fall he returns to Brazil (11/6) and visits Uruguay (12/1).

The travel journals of Harvard professor, curator, and evolutionary biologist George Gaylord Simpson ought to be near the top research lists of scholars investigating twentieth-century history, travel, conservation, anthropology, and paleontology. Available in seven boxes of handwritten journals, typed pages, carbon copies, and countless ephemera, Simpson's travel writings provide textured insights into his life, research, intellectual, philosophical, and political positions. Over the course of six decades of journaling (1924-1984), Simpson records at least 36 distinct expeditions, traveling to every continent and documenting discoveries in extraordinary detail and literary style. (Consider the locations identified with this note representative rather than comprehensive of his diverse travels.) Noteworthy journals include: Depression-era trips to Patagonia (1931, 1934), an extended tour of Venezuela in the late-1930s (1938-39), trips to Brazil and the Amazon basin (1954-56, 1983-84), a tour to Spain under Franco (1960), expeditions in North Africa and the Middle East just before the Six Day War (1967), visits to Australia (1951, 1968), Fiji (1968), Indonesia (1975), Papua New Guinea (1976), trips to the Galapagos (1970, 1974), expeditions to the Arctic (1974) and Antarctica (1971-73), a trip to Soviet Union during the Cold War (1977), and a tour of China after its economic reforms (1980).; In his travels, Simpson's mastery of detail is matched only by his curiosity and literary flourish. For example, during his 1938-39 Venezuela tour, he discusses everything from population density (4/25/1939) and the work of Catholic missionaries with indigenous populations (1/15/1939) to the sweet coffee in Barquisimeto (9/21/1938) and his method for killing an opossum without damaging its skin (10/6/1938). At times, his reflections blur the boundaries of prose and poetry. In a collection of reminders from his time in Los Robles, he lists: "The noise they make to shoo animals--This can't be written even approximately, something like the clearing of a throat long and viciously. The sound of rain falling on canvas, on bushes, everywhere, the roar of flooding gullies, and slip and thud of landslides. The sound of pigs slashing and shearing by night outside the kitchen. The smell of fresh, heavily roasted coffee being ground…Hillsides brilliant yellow and pale green with mecutera" (12/19/1938). Researchers may anticipate discovering such redolent entries scattered throughout Simpson's journals, as suggested by Selected Quotations. Although items are not individually cataloged, scholars may choose to begin to mine this rich collection using Anne Roe Simpson's "Note on travel diaries."