EDITOR'S PREFACE.

THE following pages must not be taken as a history or detailed account of India, China, and Japan. All that the author claims for his book is, that his readers will accept what he has written as the impressions of a good-natured traveller who knows how to make use of his eyes. In this respect, the most ill-natured critic will scarcely find much to carp at. MR. BAYARD TAYLOR, the well-known American traveller and author, cannot fail to prove an entertaining companion; and the more the world knows of him, the better the world must inevitably be pleased.

In preparing this volume for the perusal of an English public, I have done nothing more than purge it of some redundancies, and correct some trifling errors of fact; errors that were almost the necessary consequences of

the haste in which it was written. In the Appendix an attempt has been made to fill up the gaps left in Mr. Taylor's narrative. Events which have occurred since the author's visit have made this course desirable, as it would certainly have been bad taste to have interpolated the text with much new matter, however interesting.

Lord Elgin's expedition to China and Japan, and the conclusion of the rebellion in India, together with the new relations that have, within the last few months, arisen between England and the great Asiatic nations, will doubtless invest this volume with a new and additional interest.

CHRISTMAS, 1859.

G. F. P.

AUTHOR'S PREFACE.

WITH this Volume ends the record of two-and-ahalf years of travel, commenced in the "Journey to Central Africa," and continued in the "Lands of the Saracen." Although the entire travels herewith presented embrace India, China, and Japan, they were all accomplished in the space of a year. Hence, some of my descriptions may bear the marks of haste, and I may, occasionally, have founded a judgment on the first rapid impressions, which a greater familiarity with the subject might not have confirmed. In answer to objections of this kind, I may say that I have conscientiously endeavoured

to be correct and impartial, and that, in preparing this work for the press, I have carefully tested the original impressions recorded on the spot, by the truer images which slowly ripen in the memory, and by the light of subsequent experience.

The portions of the book devoted to India and China are as complete as the length of my stay in

those countries allowed me to make them. The account of my visit to Loo-Choo and Japan, however, is less full and detailed than I could have wished. In accordance with special regulations issued by the Secretary of the United States' Navy, I was obliged to give up my journals to the Department, at the close of my connection with the Expedition. It was understood that they would be retained and employed in the compilation of the Narrative of the Expedition prepared by order of Congress. As my accounts of the most interesting events which. I witnessed had already been pub