s selected--a young man attached to the
English consular department, a perfect master of the Chinese language
and customs, and a fine type of the best class of young Englishmen.

Provided with the necessary passports from the British minister,
countersigned by the Tsung-li-yamen, the Chinese foreign office, Mr.
Margary started on his journey. He went up the Yangtsze river as far as
Hankow in one of the huge American steamers of the Shanghai Steam
Navigation Company. At Hankow, on September 4, 1874, he bade good-by to
Western civilization, and, with a Chinese teacher and two or three
Chinese attendants, began his trip through a vast and populous country,
a _terra incognita_ to Europeans.

His diary of this journey has recently been published. It is interesting
in the extreme, though devoid of those startling episodes that generally
give charm to accounts of travels in unexplored lands.

He has no old theories to prove and no ambition to start new ones, but
simply jots down his impressions of people and things with no attempt at
elaboration. The result is, we have a plain, faithful, unvarnished
picture of Chinese life and manners, as seen by an intelligent,
unprejudiced man. Upon the whole, we think this picture most decidedly
favorable to the Chinese character.

Did space permit, we should like to follow Mr. Margary, stage by stage,
through his long journey of 900 miles. The first part, through the
provinces of Yunnan and Kwei-chow as far as the city of Ch'en-yuan-fu,
was made by boat--a long and monotonous trip of four weeks, through a
country so picturesque that the "sight was at last completely satiated
with the perpetual view of the most glorious scenery that ever made the
human heart leap with wonder and delight."

At Ch'en-yuan-fu he exchanged his boat for a chair, in which he
completed his journey; traversing Kwei-chow and Yunnan, and the
debatable hill land that lies between the latter province and Burmah;
arriving in Bhamo, on the Burmese side of the border, on January 17,
1875, where he joined the expedition of Colonel Browne that was
advancing to meet him.

Except in two or three instances, he was treated with courtesy by the
people and respect by the officials. In the exceptional cases a display
of his Chinese passports sufficed to quickly change the demeanor of the
mandarins; while a few calm words of rebuke upon their want of
politeness generally caused popular mobs to disperse abashed. An
instance o