INTO THE FLORA OF CHINA. 25 
In tie same year, 1655, when Martini’s Novus Atlas Sinensis 
was published in Europe, the Dutch E. I. Company sent an 
embassy to Peking and appointed Goyer and Keyser, two 
merchants of Batavia, as envoys. SfJCEUH©^ who 
accompanied them as steward of the mission, published 
ten years later a work under the title: LEGATI0 
BATAVXCA AB MAGNUM TAETAE1AE 
CHAM1J1 SUNG TEIUM ? * SUAE IM- 
FEEATOREM. A'mst. 1665, It is illustrated by a 
great number of engravings representing views, plants, animals 
and other things relating to China, and has been translated into 
several European languages. This book may well stand as a 
model of the most impudent plagiarism and imposture in the 
literature of travels in the 17th century. As 1ST. quotes no 
previous books on China, Ihe reader cannot but suppose that 
all the rich information he furnishes with respect to that 
Empire, had been gathered by himself in China. But in 
reality it is only the diary of the embassy’s journey from 
Canton to Peking, partly by land and partly by river and the 
Grand Canal, which 1ST. can claim as his property, and there is 
nothing in it to boast of, for the whole narrative abounds in 
errors and intentional misrepresentations. As far as I can 
judge the drawings in this work, representing Chinese scenery, 
are all pure creations of fancy. The cities and villages of 
North China, through which they passed, appear there as 
overshadowed by lofty Cocoanut trees, and even Peking, of 
which a large view is given, with the great wall close behind 
the city, has not been exempted by the artist in this respect. 
As to the rest of the accounts found in this work, they are a 
reproduction of Martini’s valuable Atlas sinensis, and that is 
precisely the case regarding the chapter dealing with Chinese 
plants, animals, etc. The engravings representing plants have 
been borrowed from Bon tins and Boym. Some of them seem 
to be the production of the artist’s imagination. 
In 1670 Dr. 35 AFP Eli, published in Dutch a H.I3S- 
CHIPTIOM OF THE CHIIE'SE EMFlftE, 
appended to his narratives of the second and the third Dutch 
embassy to the Chinese Court, in 1662 and 1666-1668. This 
is also nothing more than a translation of the Atlas sinensis, 
often misunderstood, undigested and indigestible. Nearly 
twenty pages in it are devoted to the Botany of China. The 
greater part of the drawings of Boymls Flora sinensis are here 
reproduced and, of course, no sources are adduced. 
* Emperor Shun chi 1644--62. 
