Good Fortune

AS promised in an earlier post (http://timspanton.blogspot.com/2020/10/another-entertaining-historical-read.html), I bought the earlier of two books written by botanist Robert Fortune, having thoroughly enjoyed his later A Journey To The Tea Countries Of China.

The earlier book is an illustrated edition of Three Years' Wanderings In The Northern Provinces Of China.

Fortune went hunting flowers and other unusual (to Western eyes) plants in the 1840s, following China's partial opening up to foreigners after the First Opium War.

Although there is some sense of adventure, especially towards the end when he has to fight off pirates, this first book has less travel and less skulduggery compared to the second, when Fortune was effectively part of a plot to seriously undermine China's dominance of the tea trade.

Change of Fortune

However I am glad I read the books in the order that I did as, if I had read Three Years' Wanderings first, I probably would not have bothered seeking out A Journey To The Tea Countries, and that would have been a considerable miss.