Book Description

Excerpt from The Log of the Fortuna: A Cruise on Chinese Waters; Containing Tales of Adventure in Foreign Climes by Sea and by Shore I felt bitterly annoyed to think that I had given up so much in order to lay my bones in China - that distant, out-of-the-way, outlandish, barbarian country: that remote empire where the compass points south instead of north; where men wear petticoats and women wear trousers; where they shave the head instead of the chin; where pockets are worn outside instead of inside the dress: where bedrooms are on the ground floor instead of up-stairs; where the men wear pigtails, but cut off their pigs' tails; where shoes, umbrellas, and lanterns are made of paper; where wooden anchors are used for ships, which are built with square instead of pointed bows; where etiquette commands people to put on the hat instead of take it off; where they write with a paint-brush instead of a pen; where they pray to devils much more earnestly than to gods; where rank and title, instead of being hereditary, is retrospective, and ascends to a man's great-grandmother, &c., instead of descending to his successors; and where, in fact, not to write a volume of the contrariness and difference to European taste and custom, everything is grotesque, upside-down, and entirely opposed to western civilisation. I fall back in bed and grievously reflect upon all these things; and at every twinge of my rheumatism - which, by the way, is captain and leader of my other maladies - life and prospects seem to grow blacker and blacker. "Boy boy, you rascal " I at last yell. About the Publisher Forgotten Books publishes hundreds of thousands of rare and classic books. Find more at www.forgottenbooks.com This book is a reproduction of an important historical work. Forgotten Books uses state-of-the-art technology to digitally reconstruct the work, preserving the original format whilst repairing imperfections present in the aged copy. In rare cases, an imperfection in the original, such as a blemish or missing page, may be replicated in our edition. We do, however, repair the vast majority of imperfections successfully; any imperfections that remain are intentionally left to preserve the state of such historical works.