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Title: Trade and Travel in the Far East
or Recollections of twenty-one years passed in Java,
Singapore, Australia and China.

Author: G. F. Davidson

Release Date: October 24, 2008 [EBook #27014]

Language: English

Character set encoding: ASCII

*** START OF THIS PROJECT GUTENBERG EBOOK TRADE AND TRAVEL IN THE FAR EAST ***

TRADE AND TRAVEL
IN THE
FAR EAST;

OR
RECOLLECTIONS OF TWENTY-ONE YEARS
PASSED IN
JAVA, SINGAPORE, AUSTRALIA,
AND CHINA.

BY G. F. DAVIDSON.

LONDON:
MADDEN AND MALCOLM,
LEADENHALL STREET.
1846.

LONDON:
PRINTED BY MADDEN AND MALCOLM,
8 LEADENHALL STREET.

PREFACE.

The following pages were written to beguile the tediousness of a long
voyage from Hong Kong to England, during the spring and summer of 1844.
When I state, that the whole was written with the paper on my knee, for
want of a desk, amid continual interruptions from three young children
lacking amusement during their long confinement on ship-board, and with
a perpetual liability to be pitched to leeward, paper and all,--I shall
have said enough to bespeak from every good-natured reader a candid
allowance for whatever defects may attach to the composition. It is
necessary, however, that I should also premise, that the sketches are
drawn entirely from memory, and that the incidents referred to in the
earlier chapters, took place some twenty years ago. That my recollection
may have proved treacherous on some minor points, is very possible; but,
whatever may be the merits or demerits of the work in other respects, it
contains, to the best of my knowledge and belief, nothing but truth in
the strictest sense of that term; and, as imbodying the result of my own
personal observations in the countries visited, it may possess an
interest on that account, not always attaching to volumes of higher
pretensions.

My wanderings have been neither few nor short, and, perhaps, verify the
old proverb, that a rolling stone gathers no moss. I have crossed the
Ocean in forty different square-rigged vessels; have trod the plains of
H