In 1854, George Batty (no biographical information available) wrote this journal as a long anecdotal letter to his friends, describing his sea voyage from Liverpool to Montreal on the ships "Cleopatra" and "New Era". Batty's vivid daily account spans more than two weeks in August and September, with accompanying observations about city living in Montreal added in December at the end of the diary. Batty describes conditions of the ship and the weather, his fellow passengers, various events aboard the ship (such as a fire, drunken stowaways, iceberg encounters, and porpoise interactions), and also relates his impressions of Quebec and Montreal during his stay. Observations of the upper Canadian coast, the St. Lawrence River, the Victoria Bridge, Eskimo and Iroquois tribes, the timber trade, and severe winter conditions are present in the manuscript.
