Walmesley wrote this travellers' guide in 1821, at a time when, just after the Napoleonic Wars, the Channel Islands were becoming known as a quiet retreat for inexpensive retirement and a destination for educated tourists. The text provides contemporary source material for the historian, with penetrating comments on individuals, families, houses, gardens and estates. His own sketches of well-known places are instantly recognisable, despite the changes of the intervening years. The islands are revealed as still essentially rural and largely unspoilt.