CHAPTER I. 



INCEPTION, AIM, AND OUTFITTING OF THE EXPEDITION. 



CIX centuries have elapsed since Marco Polo returned to Europe from his long 

 sojourning in the unknown East. Wonderful indeed were the tales he 

 brought, but none surpassing his description — incredible as it seemed — of the 

 mighty dominions of the Grand Khan. It is related that on his death-bed the 

 Venetian traveller was adjured to recant his narrative. But he remained firm ; 

 succeeding years have steadily piled up an overwhelming weight of testimony 

 to his truthfulness ; and never throughout this whole period have the peoples 

 of the West failed to find in China a source of most lively interest and 

 unlimited speculation. 



Nor, indeed, has this interest been of a purely abstract character, for, as 

 centurj' has followed century', merchants, missionaries, explorers and scholars, 

 have made their way in ever-increasing numbers, to the shores and boundaries 

 of the Celestial Empire. They have penetrated into the interior, studied the 

 language, and investigated customs, classics, and folk-lore. They have written 

 many books, compiled maps, and brought away pictorial records on film and 

 canvas. Numerous Treaty Ports have been established, each with a large and 

 increasing European population. In many towns of the interior, schools, 

 colleges, and hospitals have been started under the direction of Europeans, 

 who, living thus amongst the Chinese, obtain ample opportunity of studying 

 their characteristics. Railways, too, have been opened, connecting the large 

 cities of the maritime provinces, as well as those of the Hinterland. With 

 all these facts in view, we may be tempted to wonder whether any great scope 

 for the explorer still remains. 



And yet how little is really known. Cathay, with its paradox of barbarism 

 and civilisation, its teeming millions of fellow-skinned agriculturalists — 

 toiling to-day with implements as rude as those their forefathers wielded 

 two thousand years ago — its mighty rivers and mountain ranges, its rich 

 mineral deposits, its ancient tombs, and its relics of a bygone prosperity, 

 remains still a land of mystery — enigmatic, perhaps inscrutable. Who can 

 say that he knows the Chinese people ? What scholar has wrested from their 

 classics and their records all the secrets of that dim past, when war raged 

 without cease along the Tartar marches, and the first dynasties of the infant 

 Empire were emerging from the tumult and the strife ? Can we be confident 

 that even in the littoral and more traversed regions the flora and fauna hold 



