All through the trip he carried books with him, and every minute not occupied in gathering material for his letters was passed in reading the history of the scenes and the people he was among, in mastering their language.  Such close application added an interesting background of historical information to his letters, a breadth and culture, that made them decidedly more valuable and entertaining than if confined strictly to what he saw and heard.  It was on this journey that he heard the legend from which grew his famous lecture, “Acres of Diamonds,” which has been given already three thousand four hundred and twenty times.  It gave him an almost inexhaustible fund of material on which he has drawn for his lectures and books since.

During his absence his second child, a son, Leon, was born.  He returned home for the briefest time, and then completed the tour by way of the West and the Pacific.  He lectured through the Western States and Territories, for already his fame as a lecturer was spreading.  He visited the Sandwich Islands, Japan, China, Sumatra, Siam, Burmah, the Himalaya Mountains, India, returning home by way of Europe.  His Hong Kong letter to “The Tribune,” exposing the iniquities of the labor-contract system in Chinese emigration, created quite a stir in political and diplomatic circles.  It was while on this trip he gathered the material for his first book, “Why and How the Chinese Emigrate.”  It was reviewed as the best book in the market of its kind.  The “New York Herald” in writing of it said:  “There has been little given to the public which throws more timely and intelligent light upon the question of coolie emigration than the book written by Col.  Russell H. Conwell, of Boston.”

These travels were replete with thrilling adventures and strange coincidents.  When he left Somerville after his brief visit, for his trip through the Western States, China and Japan, a broken-hearted mother in Charlestown, Mass., asked him to find her wandering boy, whom she believed to be “somewhere in China.”  A big request, but Colonel Conwell, busy as he was, did not forget it.  Searching for him in such places as he believed the boy would most likely frequent, Colonel Conwell accidentally entered, one night in Hong Kong, a den of gamblers.  Writing of the event, he says: 

“At one table sat an American, about twenty-five years old, playing with an old man.  They had been betting and drinking.  While the gray-haired man was shuffling the cards for a ‘new deal’ the young man, in a swaggering, careless way, sang, to a very pathetic tune, a verse of Phoebe Carey’s beautiful hymn,

  ’One sweetly solemn thought
    Comes to me o’er and o’er: 
  I’m nearer home to-day
    Than e’er I’ve been before.’