ALBERT FYTCHE, Chief Commissioner of British Burma; to Dr. ROST and Dr. FORBES-WATSON, of the India Office Library and Museum; to Mr. R. H. MAJOR, and Mr. R. K. DOUGLAS, of the British Museum; to Mr. N. B. DENNYS, of Hong-kong; and to Mr. C. GARDNER, of the Consular Establishment in China. There are not a few others to whom my thanks are equally due; but it is feared that the number of names already mentioned may seem ridiculous, compared with the result, to those who do not appreciate from how many quarters the facts needful for a work which in its course intersects so many fields required to be collected, one by one. I must not, however, omit acknowledgments to the present Earl of DERBY for his courteous permission, when at the head of the Foreign Office, to inspect Mr. Abbott’s valuable unpublished Report upon some of the Interior Provinces of Persia; and to Mr. T. T. COOPER, one of the most adventurous travellers of modern times, for leave to quote some passages from his unpublished diary. PALERMO, _31st December, 1870_. [_Original Dedication._] TO HER ROYAL HIGHNESS, MARGHERITA, _Princess of Piedmont_, THIS ENDEAVOUR TO ILLUSTRATE THE LIFE AND WORK OF A RENOWNED ITALIAN IS BY HER ROYAL HIGHNESS’S GRACIOUS PERMISSION =Dedicated= WITH THE DEEPEST RESPECT BY H. YULE. ---------------------------------------------------------------------- [1] _Cathay and The Way Thither, being a Collection of Minor Medieval Notices of China_. London, 1866. The necessities of the case have required the repetition in the present work of the substance of some notes already printed (but hardly published) in the other. [2] Viz. Mr. Hugh Murray’s. I mean no disrespect to Mr. T. Wright’s edition, but it is, and professes to be, scarcely other than a reproduction of Marsden’s, with abridgment of his notes. [3] In the _Quarterly Review_ for July, 1868. [4] M. Nicolas Khanikoff. [5] In the Preliminary Notices will be found new matter on the Personal and Family History of the Traveller, illustrated by Documents; and a more elaborate attempt than I have seen elsewhere to classify and account for the different texts of the work, and to trace their mutual relation.