IN SOUTH-EASTERN ASIA, EMBRACING HINDUSTAN, MALAYA, SIAM, AND CHINA; WITH NOTICES OF NUMEROUS MISSIONARY STATIONS, AND A FULL ACCOUNT OF THE BURMAN EMPIRE; WITH DISSERTATIONS, TABLES, ETC. BY HOWARD MALCOM. "Homo sum; humani nihil a me alienum puto."........... TERENCE. SECOND EDITION. TWO VOLUMES IN ONE. VOL. I. BOSTON: GOULD, KENDALL, AND LINCOLN. SOLD BY BOOKSELLERS GENERALLY THROUGHOUT THE 1839. PRESERVATIÓN OCT 0 4 1994 DS507 M28 1839 Entered according to Act of Congress, in the year 1839, BY GOULD, Kendall, and LINCOLN, In the Clerk's Office of the District Court of Massachusetts. CARPENTIER STEREOTYPED AT THE BOSTON TYPE AND STEREOTYPE FOUNDRY. PREFACE. THE only aim of the following pages is utility. Had a place been sought among admired travellers, I should have given more descriptions, incidents, and delineations of private character; and fewer facts, opinions, and reflections; which would at once have. saved labor, and rendered me less vulnerable. The Honest intentions, diligent inquiries, and fortunate opportunities, will not secure a traveller from errors, even in Europe or America, where, in every place, we meet persons of veracity, and free to impart information. In the East, the case is much worse. foreigner, dreaded for his power, and abhorred for his religion, excites both civil and religious jealousy. His manners often displease, by the omission of forms of which he may be ignorant, or to which he cannot succumb. He is met with taciturnity, or wilful misrepresentation; and if he escape these, he will generally encounter ignorance. If he be so happy as to find both intelligence and communicativeness, the want of books, maps, charts, and statistics, renders the information of natives merely local, and often conflicting. Added to all, his interpreter may be unskilful. If he $15430 depends upon resident foreigners, their arrival may have been recent, or their opportunities small, or their inquiries negligent, or the statements of one may be flatly contradicted by those of another. All these embarrassments have met me by turns, so that frequently, after laborious and continued inquiries, I have been compelled to lay aside the whole mass of notes, in the utter inability to decide whom to believe. I preferred silence, and apparent deficiency, to questionable statements. My advantages have, nevertheless, been great. I was sent out, as the deputy and representative of one of the great American Missionary Societies, to examine into, and with the missionaries adjust, many points not casily settled by correspondence; to compare the various modes of operation in different missions; to survey the field; to compare the claims of proposed new stations; to comfort, encourage, and strengthen the missionaries in their arduous work; and to gather details on every point where the Board lacked information. Such a mission gave me confidence, in the eyes of all classes, wherever I went; and toleration in making investigations, which might otherwise have been deemed impertinent. The time spent at each place, was sufficient for deliberate inquiries, from various sources. In most places, I found missionaries and civilians, who had lived long on the spot, and who gave me the fruits of mature and extended observations. My interpreters were in general not only thoroughly conversant with the language, but in the habit of familiar intercourse with the people, and possessing their confidence. |