Taiwan.- Pickering (William Alexander) Pioneering in Formosa: Recollections of Adventures among Mandarins, Wreckers, & Head-Hunting Savages, first edition, presentation inscription by author, half-title, portrait frontispiece, 23 plates, 1 map, advertisements at end, occasional spotting, cracked hinge, original decorative cloth, gilt, rubbed, bumping to corners and extremities, 8vo, 1898.

⁂ Pickering worked as a tidewaiter for the Chinese Imperial Maritime Customs office in Fuzhou and Formosa (now Taiwan) in the 1860s and learnt the local dialect. In 1877 he was appointed as the first Protector to administer the Chinese Protectorate in colonial Singapore. Speaking both Mandarin and Hokkien, the first European in Singapore to do so, he managed to keep the secret societies under control, maintaining authority and subduing unrest by playing his bagpipes in the street.