The reader of this book, being supposed to have read my former work, in two volumes, and to have got some account from them, of the eight years of my life spent amongst the wild Indians of the "_Far West_," in the forests of America, knows enough of me by this time to begin familiarly upon the subject before us, and to accompany me through a brief summary of the scenes of eight years spent amidst the civilization and refinements of the "_Far East_." After having made an exhibition of my Indian Collection for a short time, in the cities of New York, Boston, and Philadelphia, in the United States, I crossed the Atlantic with it--not with the fear of losing my scalp, which I sometimes entertained when entering the Indian wilderness--and entirely without the expectation of meeting with excitements or novelties enough to induce me to commit the sin of writing another book; and the thought of doing it would never have entered my head, had not another of those untoward accidents, which have directed nearly all the important moves of my life, placed in my possession the materials for the following pages, which I have thought too curious to be withheld from the world. After I had been more than four years in England, making an exhibition of my collection, and endeavouring, by my lectures in various parts of the kingdom, to inform the English people of the true character and condition of the North American Indians, and to awaken a proper sympathy for them, three different parties of Indians made their appearance, at different dates, in England, for the purpose of exhibiting themselves and their native modes to the enlightened world, their conductors and themselves stimulated by the hope of gain by their exertions. These parties successively, on their arrival, (knowing my history and views, which I had made known to most of the American tribes,) repaired to my Indian Collection, in which they felt themselves at home, surrounded as they were by the portraits of their own chiefs and braves, and those of their enemies, whom they easily recognised upon the walls. They at once chose the middle of my Exhibition Hall as the appropriate place for their operations, and myself as the expounder of their mysteries and amusements; and, the public seeming so well pleased with the fitness of these mutual illustrations, I undertook the management of their exhibitions, and conducted the three different parties through the countries and scenes described in the following pages.