Pickering (William Alexander) Pioneering in Formosa: Recollections of Adventures among Mandarins, Wreckers, & Head-Hunting Savages, first edition, half-title, portrait frontispiece, map and 23 plates, 4pp. of advertisements at end, plus 4pp. folding advertisement for Little Kayas cigars tipped in, ink inscription on half-title, original pictorial red cloth, gilt, uncut, an excellent bright copy, 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.