The author of the following work is a certain _Yung lun yuen_, called _Jang sëen_,[7] a native of the city or market town _Shun tih_, eighty le southerly from Canton. The great number of proper names, of persons and places, to be found in the "_History of the Pacification of the Pirates_," together with the nicknames and thieves' slang employed by the followers of Ching y[)i]h, presented peculiar difficulties in the translation of _Yuen's_ publication. The work was published in November 1830 at Canton; and it is to be regretted, for the fame of the author in the _Great Western Ocean_, that he used provincial and abbreviated characters. I will not complain that by so doing he caused many difficulties to his translator, for a native of _Shun tih_ would not trouble himself on that point; but I have reason to believe that the head schoolmaster of Kwang tung will think it an abomination that Yung lun yuen should dare take such liberties in a historical composition. Schoolmasters have a greater sway in China than any where else, and they like not to be trifled with. These are particularly the men, who, above all others, oppose any innovation or reform; scholars, who presume to know every thing between heaven and earth: and they may certainly satisfy every man, who will rest satisfied by mere words. These learned gentlemen are too much occupied with their own philosophical and literary disquisitions, to have any time, or to think it worth their notice, to pay attention to surrounding empires or nations. If we consider the scanty and foolish notices which are found in recent Chinese publications regarding those nations with which the Chinese should be well acquainted, we cannot but form a very low estimate of the present state of Chinese literature. How far otherwise are the accounts of foreign nations, which are to be found in the great work of Matuanlin! It will, perhaps, be interesting to the European reader to learn, what the Chinese know and report concerning the nations of _Ta se yang_, or the _Great Western Ocean_. I therefore take an opportunity here to give some extracts from a Chinese publication relative to European nations, printed last year at Canton. The _fifty-seventh book_ of the _Memoirs concerning the South of the Mei ling Mountains_, contains a history of all the Southern barbarians (or foreigners); and here are mentioned--with the _Tanka_ people and other barbarous tribes of Kwang tung and Kwang se--the _Siamese_, the _Mahometans_, the _French_, _Dutch_, _English_, _Portuguese_, _Austrians_, _Prussians_, and _Americans_. The work was published by the command of Yuen, the ex-Governor-General of Canton, who is considered one of the principal living literary characters of China, and it consists chiefly of extracts from the voluminous history of the province Kwang tung, published by his Excellency:-- _The Religion of the Hwy hwy, or Mahometans._