Volume I: 'Translated and Edited with a Preliminary Essay on the Intercourse between China and the Western Nations previous to the Discovery of the Cape Route'. Containing the travels of Friar Odoric of Pordenone, 1316-30, and letters and reports from missionary friars from Cathay and India, 1292-1338, in English translation. With a list of 'illustrations from drawings by the author'. The supplementary material includes the 1866 annual report. Volume II: Contains contemporary notices of Cathay under the Mongols, from Rashiduddin; Pegolotti's notices of the land route to Cathay and of Asiatic trade in the fourteenth century; Marignolli's recollections of eastern travel; Ibn Battuta's travels in Bengal and China; the journey of Benedict Goes from Agra to Cathay; all in English translation, with Latin and Italian texts of Odoric's narrative. For a revised version of the whole work, see Second Series 33, 37, 38, 41. This is a new print-on-demand hardback edition of the volumes first published in 1866.

The diary is transcribed, with introductory notes, etc. by R. Barlow, and illustrated by 'Copious Extracts from Unpublished Records, etc.' by Colonel Henry Yule. The whole works contain: I. The diary, with index.--II. Notices regarding Sir William Hedges, documentary memoirs of Job Charnock, and other biographical and miscellaneous illustrations of the time in India. -III. Documentary contributions to a biography of Thomas Pitt, governor of Fort St. George; with collections on the early history of the company's settlement in Bengal; and on early charts and topography of the Hugli River The supplementary material consists of the 1886, 1887 and 1888 annual report. This is a new print-on-demand hardback edition of the volumes first published in 1887, 1888 and 1889.