THE TRAVELS AND ADVENTURES OF CELEBRATED TRAVELERS IN THE PRINCIPAL COUNTRIES OF THE GLOBE: WITH BRILLIANTLY ILLUMINATED ILLUSTRATIONS IN OIL COLORS, BY HENRY HOWE, AUTHOR OF "HISTORICAL COLLECTIONS OF VIRGINIA " CINCINNATI. PUBLISHED BY HENRY HOWE, NO. 111 MAIN STREET. Entered, according to act of Congress, in the year 1853, by HENRY HOWE, In the Clerk's Office of the District Court for the District of Ohio. CINCINNATI: C. A. MORGAN & CO., STEREOTYPERS, HAMMOND ST. MORGAN & OVEREND PREFACE. THE whole world are now near neighbors. Only a short time since, he who had circumnavigated the globe was looked upon with wonder, as among the favored of mortals. Now, he whose dwelling is the nearest to your own, may, within a few months, have visited "the uttermost parts of the earth," and the fact not considered sufficiently novel for your knowledge. With rapidly increasing intercourse all the world is changing. Commerce, the great civilizer, is introducing us to everybody and everybody to us. Such a general shaking of hands never was before seen since Father Time commenced his travels. Such a universal interchange of ideas never entered the conception of the wisest of the ancients. Such a magnificent" clearing" was never before opened to the Pioneer in Enterprise. Everybody is learning something from everybody. Civilized nations are consequently growing more liberal and more humane, and those not civilized are fast becoming so. To the inhabitants of a far-distant isle, the first vessel whose canvas is seen whitening their seas, is a mighty idea- not "even their fathers dreamed so great a thing;" and if this be succeeded by others and commerce springs up, then, with new ideas arise new wants, and for the gratification of these comes industry-the germ of all civilization. If still more favored, a stranger, with a benign countenance and a book in his hand, lands upon their island. He brings "glad tidings of great joy," proclaiming "Peace on earth and good will to man." Through the power of his words the islanders cast down their idols, they no longer sacrifice to false gods; they become charmed with the moral heroism of Him who came and offered his life for their good, and christian civilization is begun-that which is to leap from isle to isleto penetrate the remotest recesses of every land, and to bring all nations into one brotherhood. Not to "know the world," was excusable in olden times, when people dressed in homespun and ate from wooden trenchers; but for us, whose first act in rising is to jump out of, and into, cloth made in foreign lands, and who grumble if the first morning's meal is not agreeably seasoned by condiments from the antipodes, there can be no apology. To contribute to such a knowledge is the design of this volume: to satisfy it completely, so as to know perfectly all people, is somewhat further than we can go. It would, for instance, be a pleasant task could we, for the reader's benefit, by some process spiritually uncap the cranium of a Chinaman or of an Arab, take a peep into his mental workshop, and watch its operations for a single day: but this being one of those curious undertakings not permitted us with even our own townspeople-some of whom, with all our researches, remain to this hour complete enigmas to us-it cannot be expected we should "take such liberties with strangers." We can however do this much; we can describe the country the Chinaman lives in; how he grows his tea, and does his farming; how he spends his boyhood—the games he plays-the sort of school he attends the books he studies and the way he is flogged - how he trades and what in-what he makes and how it is made-the kind of house he lives in and the way it is furnished- how he courts and gets married-what he thinks of his wife- how much of his boys and how little of his girls his general ideas of the world and of matters and things in general-what he regards as "the chief end of man," and where he thinks his spirit is going when the grand routine of all his doings and thinkings here below is terminated, and the mortal remains of the poor Chinaman are consigned to the "tomb of his ancestors." Obtain this kind of knowledge of the principal people of the world and we obtain that which liberalizes. Something is possessed to think of and watch, beside the shape of the furrow our own plow turns over, the small gossip of our own little neighborhood, or the dirty bubbles that come walloping up from the bottom of our own political cauldron. We get, too, a more "realizing sense" of the important truth-that it is circumstance which creates national, alike with individual characteristics; and out of this grows charity for peculiar national ideas and for heterodox personal opinions. Readily do we see, had we been transported in babyhood to China and reared in a Chinese family, we should have rejoiced in a queue a yard or more long; thought angular eyes and deformed feet the acme of beauty; the |