The Land of the White Elephant with the subtitle Sight and Scenes in South-Eastern Asia a Personal Narrative of Travel and Adventure in Farther India is the accounts of Frank Vincent’s travels in 1871-1872 in India, Burma, Siam and Cochin-China. Vincent’s descriptions of the societies and people he meets are very personal and he goes into details about religion, politics, economy and daily life in every aspect. Here is a some of his thoughts and descriptions of the Burmese:

“The Burmese men are remarkably indolent; the women, however, are industrious, but it is because the men compel them to do all the household work, at least the heaviest and most irksome part of it, and they will even sit about a place where their wives arc at work, chatting and smoking, or else stretched upon the ground at full length asleep. If you give the native sufficient rice and ngapee to keep him just above the starving point, he will not work for Rs. 2 per diem; but take these articles of diet away, and he will cheer­fully work for eight annas (25 cts.) However, like their neighbours the Chinese, they make excellent carpenters and blacksmiths. Marriage among the Burmese is a most peculiar institution, and the ‘ mar­riage knot ’ is very easily undone. If two persons are tired of each other’s society, they dissolve partnership in the following simple and touching but conclusive manner: They respectively light two candles, and shut­ting up their hut, sit down and wait quietly until they are burned up. The one whose candle burns out first, gets up at once and leaves the house (and for ever), taking nothing but the clothes he or she may have on at the time; all else then becomes the property of the other.”

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The Land of the White Elephant

Impressions of Indian Travel was written by the British orientalist Oscar Browne and published in 1903 after his travels in India. He visited large parts of Northern India and traveled by train and boat and this book is based on his notes. Most interesting is his descriptions of meetings with remarkable people such as tibetans in Darjeeling, maharajas, the explorer Svend Hedin, Bhutans, holy men by the river of Ganges and daily life in India in general. Oscar Browne was however British to the bone and much of his notes are affected by his colonial viewpoints. Just skip his political comments and enjoy the book for it’s thorough and loving description of an India that no longer exists. From the book:

It is difficult to imagine a machinery by which the government of India might be transferred, even partially, to the hands of the Indian people. If that is impossible, and the Congress has not discovered a manner in which it might be introduced, we are thrown back upon the personal government of the Viceroy, advised by his Council and controlled by the India Office.

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Impressions of Indian Travel

My Experiences at Nan Shan and Port Arthur with the Fifth East Siberia Rifles is the accounts of Lieutenant-General Tretyakov, commander of the Western Section of the Defences from the battles for the possession of Port Arthur in the Russo-Japanese War 1904 and 1905 between the Russian Empire and the Empire of Japan. This books is based on a number of articles from the frontline by Tretyakov, published in the Russian military journal, “Voenny Sbornik.” As such, the book is an early account of war-journalism from a long-forgotten war.

Six thousand miles from the Russian Fatherland the author’s regiment, the 5th Siberian Rifles—and many other—fought to the death for God and the Czar. This tale is a
record of their soldierly devotion. I tells the actual history from the fighting line as we live with his men amidst the bloodstained wreck of their trenches on 203 Metre Hill. We are instantly transported from the dry bones of military history to the living realities of the battlefield.
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My Experiences at Nan Shan and Port Arthur with the Fifth East Siberia Rifles