PREFACE

Summary

MR. SAMUEL HOLMES, lately, from merit, promoted to the rank of Serjeant-Major of the 11 th Regiment of Dragoons, was one of the Guard who attended Lord Macartney on his Embassy to China and to Tartary, and kept a regular Diary of what passed on the occasion, within the sphere of his own knowledge and inquiries. On careful perusal of this Diary or Journal, it appears to bear every mark of authenticity, and to carry internal evidence of its being written, as it professes to be, on immediate and local impression from the objects and circumstances within the view of a person in the writer's situation. On such grounds, the Journal of a Voyage to China, written by a worthy, sensible, but unlearned man, is recommended to notice: on such ground it humbly rests;—and if therein little is added to the stock of intelligence already received of what was remarked, or what occurred, during the expedition alluded to, yet that little may not appear wholly uninteresting; and specially as it is presumed, from the character of the writer, to have the value of Truth, and that the curious reader may with confidence place it to his account of knowledge respecting that great and secluded nation, to which the inquiries of the politician and philosopher have been so long and much directed.