Julia Stevens Buffington Diary, 18941 vol., 21 cm., 96 leaves, with 194 pages of manuscript in Buffington's hand; clippings and botanical specimens tipped in; several drawings; enclosures. Volume 2 of a multi-volume travel diary kept by Julia Stevens Buffington (1872-1900) during a world tour in 1894. Buffington was a native of Swansea, Bristol County, Massachusetts, and a recent (1894) graduate of Wellesley College. She travelled with a family party headed by a wealthy uncle, the Worcester drug manufacturer Elisha D. Buffington (1836-1900). The diary begins partway through an entry for 15 October 1894, when Buffington was in Kyoto, Japan; it continues with daily entries through 20 November, as the party travelled by rail to Kobe, Nara, and Osaka, and by steamer to Nagasaki, Shanghai, Canton, Hong Kong, and Singapore (en route to Ceylon and India). The text runs to some 30,000 words, and contains quite detailed descriptions of temples and shrines, gardens and flower shows, festivals, plays, and other Japanese and Chinese tourist destinations of the day, as well as accounts and impressions of cities, landscapes, and people. There is also a good deal on shipboard socializing. Buffington occasionally alludes to the First Sino-Japanese War of 1894-95, most notably in a 7-page account of a theatrical performance witnessed in Osaka. MSN/MN 8009-1-B to MSN/MN 8009-2.