Excerpt from The New America and the Far East: A Picturesque and Historic Description of These Lands and Peoples During that period, we have changed from one of the weakest to the most powerful nation on the globe. Fifty years ago, the monarchs who governed what were then the leading nations of the earth established diplomatic relations with scarcely a thought of the young republic on the western Shore of the Atlantic. N ow, the powerful nations of the world seek our friendship, and none venture any important diplomacy without first learning whether it will be acceptable to this great republic. 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.