Extracts from the Book

This was home to some of China’s richest merchants and also one of its poorest cities, its narrow sunless streets ‘as crooked as rams’ horns’, crammed with beggars and cripples, the dead and the dying.  Here and there a pretty curved roof jutted over streets that doubled as latrines, the drain in the middle permanently blocked by sewage and night soil.  Scavenging dogs and pigs competed for scraps with hideously deformed people who dragged their swollen extremities through the dirt.  These were symptoms of elephantiasis – Patrick had yet to discover its causes.

A conscientious consul made sure he knew the right people and attended the important occasions.  One of the most important was the wedding of Zeynab Khanoum, the Pasha’s youngest and favourite daughter. No expense was spared, although the bride was unhappy with her father’s choice of groom. She wore silk with Brussels lace and a velvet jacket trimmed with sable.  So many and so heavy were her diamonds that she looked like a Christmas tree.

When Philippe Jacques arrived in 1787, St Petersburg had existed for only eighty years.  Peter the Great had chosen this unprepossessing site for its position on the Gulf of Finland and access to the Baltic.  It was not an obvious choice for a capital city, being so far from anywhere.  Thousands of serfs and prisoners died building this dream.  There were problems with drainage and contaminated water causing regular epidemics of cholera and typhoid.  Flooding, mists, fog and extremes of climate tested human endurance.  Winter lasted from October to April and brought frosts of minus 60C and four hours of daylight.

In June the plan was to move to Loma Loma on the island of Bau in the Lau peninsula to carry out further research into filariasis. The Lau islands lay to the north of Fiji between Tonga and Fiji.  Bau had been a stronghold of Cakobau, an important Fijian chief in the 19th century.  Permission from the current chief, the Buli  had to be obtained first since no one could land without it  Bau was known as an island of cannibals; the sacrificial stone remained in the ground for all to see .  In 1833 a French ship, the Aimable Josephine went aground on the reef.  Everyone was captured and all the white passengers eaten.