The journal of David Brown, surgeon aboard the British whaling ships Britannia and Speedy between 1791 and 1796 under Captain Thomas Melvill. Preserved in handwritten manuscript form in the State Library of New South Wales, Brown describes the flora and fauna of newly encountered landscapes and interactions with diverse cultures, from the fledgling settlement at Sydney Cove, to Rio de Janeiro and Lima, to the uninhabited Galapagos Islands, around Cape Horn and into the Bay of Saints.