Constance Gordon-Cumming

Inveterate Victorian traveler and prolific artist Constance Gordon-Cumming roamed far and wide: from the Scottish Highlands to the American West, from the islands of Hawaii to southern China. Even among her many adventures Gordon-Cumming's 1878/1879 trip to Hong Kong was momentous. She arrived just before Christmas 1878 to inadvertently witness the terrible "Great Fire" of Hong Kong that swept devastatingly through the Central and Mid-Levels districts. She then moved on to explorations of the streets, temples and Chinese New Year festivities in Canton (Guangzhou) before returning to Hong Kong for the horse races at Happy Valley in February 1879. Gordon-Cumming is that rare travel writer who while plunging into the throngs and crowds manages to observe the minutiae of life around her. "The flames rapidly gained the mastery, suddenly bursting from fresh houses here and there, where least suspected, and spreading from street to street. That night we stood watching this appallingly magnificent scene - the flames rising and falling, leaping and dancing, now bursting from some fresh house, shooting up in tongues of fire, now rolling in dense volumes of black smoke."

Fire fountains - The kingdom of Hawaii, its volcanoes and the history of its missions is an unchanged, high-quality reprint of the original edition of 1883. Hansebooks is editor of the literature on different topic areas such as research and science, travel and expeditions, cooking and nutrition, medicine, and other genres. As a publisher we focus on the preservation of historical literature. Many works of historical writers and scientists are available today as antiques only. Hansebooks newly publishes these books and contributes to the preservation of literature which has become rare and historical knowledge for the future.