Journal of a Visit to Constantinople and Some of the Greek Islands in the Spring and Summer of 1833

Auldjo sailed from Naples on 6 April 1833 aboard H.M.S. Actaeon, which was carrying the British embassy out to Constantinople, and kept a notebook as the ship passed Capri, Stromboli and Messina. He climbed to the Acropolis at Athens days after the Ottoman garrison surrendered it, looked over the plain of Troy and the Dardanelles, then reached the Ottoman capital during the feast of Bairam, with a Russian army camped on the Giant’s Mountain above the Bosphorus. Bazaars fill several pages: cherry-wood pipe sticks, amber mouthpieces, Broussa silks. Sailing home he stopped at Smyrna, Syra, Delos, Naxos, the cavern of Antiparos and Milo, ending in quarantine at Malta. Published in 1835 from unrevised notes, with plates etched by George Cruikshank, it records Greece and Turkey in a year of upheaval.