ABSTRACT
The Chinese Government as well as people, influenced by the precepts of their wise men, received strangers graciously so long as they implicitly obeyed, or in any manner evinced fear and submission, and returned the presents which were offered according to Oriental custom with others of still greater value. "To retain laws and customs according to the traditionary manner, and to extend these laws and customs to other lands", was the precept of the founders of the Celestial Empire, as well as of other civilised nations. All the discoveries and experiences, all the knowledge and information which they thus obtained in their peaceful or warlike relations with foreign nations, were generally recorded in the last division of the "Year-Books" of their own chronicles, forming, in an historical point of view, an inestimable treasure. Pride and vanity form the basis upon which the Chinese built their peculiar system of information regarding other lands and people.
