Samuel Pasfield Oliver

The First Convention of Beijing was however signed soon after Oliver's arrival (24 October 1860), and his service was confined to garrison duty at Canton.

On the establishment of a British embassy at Beijing in 1861 he accompanied General Sir John Michel on a visit to the capital, and subsequently made a tour through Japan.

In the following year he was transferred to Mauritius; and from there with Major-general Johnstone on a mission to Madagascar to congratulate King Radama II on his accession.

A second brief visit to the island followed in June 1863, when Oliver, after King Radama's assassination, was again despatched to Madagascar on board HMS Rapid.

His diary of his journey, ‘Rambles of a Gunner through Nicaragua' (privately printed, 1879), was subsequently embodied in a larger volume of reminiscences, entitled ‘On and Off Duty' (1881).

[1] A drawing by Oliver of a stream of lava tumbling over a cliff was reproduced in John Wesley Judd's ‘Volcanoes, what they are and what they teach' (1881).

From Guernsey, where he was appointed adjutant in 1868, he visited Brittany, and drew up a report on the prehistoric remains at Carnac and other sites (Proc.

Their third daughter, Ellen Frederica Oliver, was jailed as a suffragette and later became a key member of the Southcottian religious movement led by Mabel Barltrop.