Consists of an autograph manuscript travel account of a tour in Greece and the Levant, [Eastern Mediterranean 29th September 1844-4th February 1845]; (118) numbered pages excluding blanks, written in a tall quarto (25x18cm) contemporary book with blank pages, around 25-30 long lines of text per page, additionally nine (9) pages with ten botanical specimen collected from Greece. The book: contemporary British blank book of the 1840s; half-binding over hard boards; lacks most of leather on spine. Young's travel account remained, for more than a century after he passed away, unrecorded and unpublished.

Sir Frederick Young (1817-1913) was a British traveler and writer on Imperial affairs, honorary secretary of the Royal Colonial Institute (RCI). As his father (1792-1870) was an industrialist and British politician, he had the opportunity to travel around the world. He had published later some of his travel accounts (travel in New Zealand 1874, a winter Tour in South Africa 1890) as well as some other accounts on British colonial affairs, but this early lengthy travel account remained completely unknown. It is certain that he had kept the manuscript up to his death, as on the last page there is an additional handwritten paragraph signed by him. In this addition, dated 8th August 1910, he mourned the death of his wife Cecilia, long time ago.

Frederic Young arrived in Malta in late summer 1844. Αfter visiting Valetta, he sailed and landed in Corfu (Kerkyra), where he visited both the city and the country side. Several British, as Mr. Ward and his son, established there, as Corfu was a British colony at that time. From there he crossed to continental Greece, starting from Messolonghi, a famous city after the heroic exodus of 1826, then landed to Patras and continued to Piraeus and Athens. Long description, of several pages of text, about the Greek capital, few years after the independence; he had even attended the opening of the Chamber of Debuties (Vouli) and met with king Otto. After several tours in the surroundings, including Marathon plain, he visited Syros and from there crossed the Aegean to Smyrna. Detailed accounts of caravans with camels in Anatolia, of the bazaars of the city and its multinational population. He passed over Troy and the Dardanelles, where he remembered Lord Byron's swimming from Europe to Asia and after Callipoli, arrived in Constantinople. Lengthy accounts of the Ottoman capital, "a most superb city," according his words. Apart from the usual monuments and neighborhoods of the city, he visited and described the dancing Dervishes' spectacle, the Friday prayers, and the bazaars. From Turkey he travelled back to Malta and put in quarantine. He visited, in his way back, Syracuse, Catania, and Napoli with Pompeii.