We use cookies to distinguish you from other users and to provide you with a better experience on our websites. Close this message to accept cookies or find out how to manage your cookie settings.
The British naval officer George Francis Lyon (1795–1832) survived extremes of African heat and Arctic cold during his colourful career. Remembered chiefly for the engaging journals he kept, and for his watercolours of the Arctic, he was fascinated by the indigenous peoples of the lands he explored, notably being tattooed by Inuit and eating raw caribou and seal meat with them. In 1826 he sailed to Mexico, then recovering from its war of independence, to serve as a commissioner for an English mining company. His vivid and often entertaining two-volume account of his experiences was published in 1828. In Volume 2, Lyon encounters notorious bandits outside Guadalajara, ponders the potential navigation of rivers for commercial shipping, and writes of a visit to the Guadalajara theatre: 'had it not been for the universal smoking, and the silence and good manners of the audience, I might have almost fancied myself in England'.
To save content items to your account, please confirm that you agree to abide by our usage policies. If this is the first time you use this feature, you will be asked to authorise Cambridge Core to connect with your account. Find out more about saving content to .
To save content items to your Kindle, first ensure no-reply@cambridge.org is added to your Approved Personal Document E-mail List under your Personal Document Settings on the Manage Your Content and Devices page of your Amazon account. Then enter the ‘name’ part of your Kindle email address below. Find out more about saving to your Kindle.
Note you can select to save to either the @free.kindle.com or @kindle.com variations. ‘@free.kindle.com’ emails are free but can only be saved to your device when it is connected to wi-fi. ‘@kindle.com’ emails can be delivered even when you are not connected to wi-fi, but note that service fees apply.
Find out more about the Kindle Personal Document Service.
Full text views reflects the number of PDF downloads, PDFs sent to Google Drive, Dropbox and Kindle and HTML full text views for chapters in this book.
Loading metrics...
Book summary views reflect the number of visits to the book and chapter landing pages.
Loading metrics...
* Views captured on Cambridge Core between #date#. This data will be updated every 24 hours.
Usage data cannot currently be displayed.
Accessibility compliance for the PDF of this book is currently unknown and may be updated in the future.