PREFACE TO THE THIRD EDITION. V 
most acceptable to the scientific and learned, are not 
very interesting to the general reader. Nothing, how- 
ever, has been omitted which I believe of general 
interest. My adventures amongst the most remarkable 
and least-known people in the world, their manners and 
customs, the natural productions of the country in so far 
as they are of importance to man, and, above all, the 
mode of cultivating and making our favourite beverage, 
tea, have all been left as originally written in the country 
itself, unless where my earlier observations have been 
corrected by more experience. My encounter with a 
fleet of pirates on the coast of Fokien, which at one time 
was considered a traveller s story^' by those who were 
wiser than the traveller, will now, when people have 
more knowledge of the Chinese, be more easily credited, 
particularly by the members of missionary societies in 
Europe and America, who have to deplore the loss of 
several of their most promising labourers, who have been 
cruelly murdered by these lawless savages. 
London, December ^ 1852. 
a 3 
