Impressed by the probability of such intercommunication, Johann Friedrich Neumann, a learned German Orientalist, while residing in China, during the years 1829-30, for the purpose of collecting Chinese works, after investigating the subject, published its results in a work, subsequently translated by me, under his supervision. Among the first results of his inquiries, was the fact that 'during the course of many centuries, the Chinese acquired a surprisingly accurate knowledge of the north-east coast of Asia, extending, as their records in astronomy and natural history prove, to the sixty-fifth degree of latitude, and even to the Arctic Ocean.' From the Chinese _Book of Mountains and Seas_, it appears that the Esquimaux and their country were well known to the Chinese, and that in the sixth century, natives of the North and of the islands bordering on America, came with Japanese embassies to China. When it is borne in mind that the early Chinese geographers and astronomers determined on the situations of these northern regions, with an accuracy which has been of late years surprisingly verified by eminent European men of science, and when we learn that the Year Books or annals of China continually repeat these observations, and that their accounts of the natives of the islands within a few miles of the American shore are as undoubtedly correct as they are minute, we certainly have good reason for assuming that their description of the main land and its inhabitants is well worthy, if not of implicit belief, at least of an investigation by the savans of the Western World. Be it borne in mind, also, that during the first eight centuries of our own Christian era, a spirit of discovery in foreign lands was actively at work all over the East. In the words of Neumann: