Notebook containing a journal kept by John Richard Alexander, mainly during the period when he was flag lieutenant to his father-in-law Rear-Admiral Henry W. Bruce on HMS PRESIDENT (1829) on the Pacific station.

It begins with a voyage on the Cunard Line steamer AMERICA (1848) from Liverpool to Boston, between 9 and 25 December 1854. Alexander later travelled from Panama to Valparaiso on the Pacific Steam Navigation Co steamer LIMA (1851), arriving on 6 February 1855. This part of the journal finishes on 26 February 1855, prior to the departure of the Pacific squadron on a cruise to the north.

The second part of the journal was written by Alexander in Germany, when in company with his wife, he took the waters at the spa towns of Aix-la-Chapelle and Kissingen. A copy (from the chemist Kastner) of a table analysing the content of mineral water from the different springs at Kissingen is included. The time period appears to be 10 June to 10 July 1864.