Page:History of Corea, ancient and modern; with description of manners and customs, language and geography (1879).djvu/30

 8 INTBODUCnON. Hundreds of Chinese volumes have been carefully ransacked for this work, the sources of principal information being the General History of Su Magwang ; that of Joo Hi, brought down to the end of the Ming dynasty ; the ShuTigwoo ji or History of the Holy Wars of the Manchus ; the Doong hwa loo or Annals of the Manchu dynasty ; the History of liaotung, more bulky than satisfjEu^toiy ; and some books of travel calculated to throw some light on Ancient liaotung. The information regarding Corean Customs, Government, &a, was derived partly orally and partly from Corean books written in Chinese. The result is what appear& The process of digesting so much material is sure to leave some crude matter ; but if the author has succeeded in more clearly explaining what the intelligent and civilized races of Eastern Asia are ; and if he is able to make his fellow-countrymen take a somewhat more lively interest in the Chinese, a people possessing many elements of sterling nobility, his purpose shall have been amply fulfilled And the fact that his efforts to ferret out the origin of the Tungusic races of North-Eastem Asia have produced so little, will be the less regretted if thd work helps to give a hint to those better qualified to conduct such investigation.