material used in their composition was collected in the course of thirteen consecutive months of travel, and a not inconsiderable portion of the whole is devoted to the narrative of a journey across China from the Pacific seaboard to the Burmese frontier.
My primary object, however, has been to give the public the results of my investigations rather than a mere description of the incidents of journeys which it has been necessary to undertake in order to carry such investigations through, and descriptive narrative of the greater part of the six or seven months spent in travelling over the less inaccessible regions of the Far East, such as North China, Manchuria, Korea, and Japan, has necessarily been omitted, or, where not altogether omitted, compressed to the narrowest possible dimensions. I propose, therefore, to take the opportunity provided by an introductory chapter to say a few words from the general point of view of the traveller in Far Eastern lands.
On first acquaintance it is, perhaps, the contrast which the lands of East Asia present to those of the Near East and Central Asia
