In 1880, Isabella Bird visited the Malay Peninsula - romantically dubbed "The Golden Chersonese" - and was still able to refer to it as an almost unknown land. The world's most famous female travel writer of the nineteenth century set sail from Japan and called at Hong Kong, Canton and Saigon before reaching Singapore. Bearing letters of introduction to the elite of Malacca and Penang, Bird was able to observe life on the west coast of the peninsula before steaming upriver through mangrove swamps to explore the interior of the land. From courtroom to elephant back, from the grandeur of Malacca's Stadthuys to the jungle calm of a picturesque Malay village on stilts, this indefatigable Victorian explorer offers invaluable descriptions and delightful hand-drawn sketches of life in late nineteenth-century Singapore and the Malay Peninsula.

"Découvrez l'épopée captivante de "The Golden Chersonese and the Way Thither" par Isabella Bird, une intrépide exploratrice du XIXe siècle. Suivez Bird à travers son périple exaltant à travers la péninsule malaise, capturé avec une plume vive et immersive. Explorez des terres lointaines et des cultures fascinantes, tout en naviguant à travers les défis de l'époque victorienne. Laissez-vous emporter par cette aventure exotique, où l'intrépidité de Bird et son récit vibrant vous transportent dans une époque révolue. Un récit de voyage intemporel imprégné d'aventure, de découverte et de courage, qui continue de captiver les lecteurs à travers les âges."

Even in the last two decades of the nineteenth century, Isabelle Bird, by then an established travel writer, was able to refer to the Malay Peninsula as an almost unknown land. Travelling back from Japan, the intrepid travel writer stopped off in Singapore where the British Colonial Secretary offered her the opportunity to vist the native states of the Western Archipelago. Because she had such a good introduction, she went and was taken everywhere by local officials. And so Miss Bird's journey was less rugged than her many other trips, but, rather more comfortable and well connected, she enjoyed it immensely.

The legendary Victorian traveler's previously unpublished letters to her homebound sister.

In the seventh century the kingdom of Samarkand sent formal gifts of fancy yellow peaches, large as goose eggs and with a color like gold, to the Chinese court at Ch'ang-an. What kind of fruit these golden peaches really were cannot now be guessed, but they have the glamour of mystery, and they symbolize all the exotic things longed for, and unknown things hoped for, by the people of the T'ang empire. This book examines the exotics imported into China during the T'ang Dynasty (A.D. 618-907), and depicts their influence on Chinese life. Into the land during the three centuries of T'ang came the natives of almost every nation of Asia, all bringing exotic wares either as gifts or as goods to be sold. Ivory, rare woods, drugs, diamonds, magicians, dancing girls—the author covers all classes of unusual imports, their places of origin, their lore, their effort on costume, dwellings, diet, and on painting, sculpture, music, and poetry. This book is not a statistical record of commercial imports and medieval trade, but rather a "humanistic essay, however material its subject matter."