Purchase of this book includes free trial access to www.million-books.com where you can read more than a million books for free. This is an OCR edition with typos. Excerpt from book: Introduction. O little is known regarding Tonqum?a country full of interest during the present crisis?that these letters, which, as they appeared in The Times newspaper, attracted considerable attention both on the continent and at home, will be welcomed in a collected form. The value of information regarding Tonquin?till lately a veritable terra incognita to Europe?was fully recognised by The Times chapter{Section 4in selecting as their special correspondent Mr. A. R. Colquhoun, the well-known traveller, whose writings on Indo-China have gained him, since his journey Across Chryse, the reputation of being ." . . alone among Englishmen. " His words are not those of a one-sided wit- " ness, or of information picked up in haste, but " they present a valuable and opportune con- "firmation of the Chinese views as stated in " the despatches of the Marquis Tseng and in " the utterances of the Pekin Foreign Office." That journalistic enterprise in England is not only alive, but can compete with that of America, is evidenced by the fact that the Vide leading article in The Times of October 31 St. admirable description of Tonquin, dated August 3oth, was sent from China vid Colombo as a telegraphic despatch, and as it contained some eight thousand words must have cost The Times proprietary a large sum of money. As the practice of " expanding " telegrams has lately been much before the public, it is interesting to note that this monster telegram appeared exactly as it was despatched. The special correspondence here reprinted by permission has been carefully revised by the Author. THE PUBLISHERS. February, 1884. chapter{Section 5The Truth about Tonquin. Hongkong (via Colombo), Aug. 30, 1883. In continuation of past telegraphic despatches, I am now in a position t...