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PREFACE.
THE third section of Peter Mundy's manuscript takes the reader half-way round the world and provides unique and interesting information, especially as regards China and Madagascar.
The transcript, as before, is taken from MS. Rawl. A. 315, at the Bodleian Library. The only other copies of this portion of the work that are known to exist are those at the British Museum and the India Office, both of which were made in the nineteenth century. The former of these. Add. MSS. 19281, fol. 1—213, contains only Relations XXI—XXVI and has no illustrations. The latter, presented to the India Office in 1814, was made from the Bodleian MS. and contains careful tracings of all the illustrations.
No change has been made in this volume in the system of spelling and punctuation adopted in its predecessors. Marginal notes, when not repeated in the text, have been used, as in Vol. 11, for paragraph headings.
So far as I am aware, beyond the references in Mr Foster's English Factories, Mundy's narrative of his China voyage as a factor in Weddell's ill-fated expedition financed by Sir William Courteen, has received no serious attention from any author except Mr James Bromley Eames (The English in China) who, however, does not seem to have consulted the original MS. or was dependent on an inaccurate copyist for his extracts.
