INTRODUCTION
In giving an English translation of Victor Jacquemont's Letters to his family and friends, during his travels in India, we shall endeavour to supply an omission in the French edition of the Work, by stating a few particulars of the life of this interesting young victim to science....
The three brothers received an excellent education such as one, in short as may be given in the public institutions of France, where instruction is not limited to a knowledge of the ancient classics, but combines them with that practical and scientific information which renders a man a useful member of society

He again wrote from the Ladak territory, in 1830, and this letter arrived safe. It contains an excellent, though rapid, sketch of his journey to the Himalaya, and we insert it here as necessary to complete Jacquemont’s correspondence. It is rather surprising that the French editor omitted it, as we know that he must have been aware of its existence...

We have only to add that the documents, so kindly sent by Sir Alexander Johnston, were not used in the French edition of Jacquemont's letters. It was intended to insert them in a memoir of the author, to be prefixed to the correspondence; but from some mismanagement of the editor, this memoir was not ready when it should have been.

On board the Zelee, at sea, between Rio Janeiro and the Cape of Good Hope, Wednesday, December 120th, 1828....

I here saw, for the first time, negro slavery, on an immense scale, forming the key-stone of society. In twenty days, I saw several vessels arrive from the coast of Africa, laden with these miserable creatures, afflicted with dreadful diseases, crowded together on landing, penned in like animals, and side by side with these horrors, the most refined luxuries of European civilisation. The Portuguese, like the Spaniards, feel not the contempt, the physical repugnance towards negroes, which few English or French can resist. They have not instituted against them, that system of refined humiliation adopted by the colonists of Jamaica and the Leeward Islands; though they are not less violent and merciless masters. Under their whip, the negroes live a few years, and then die without leaving children. The disposition of this unhappy race of men must be very mild, innocent, and timid, for vengeance and crime not to be more common at Rio, than they are.

The masters, with their polished, and even elegant, European manners, are, in many respects, as much debased by slavery as the brutified negroes. I saw them with each a golden key on his coat, with their diamonds, and their ribands, and their titles, and their ignorance, baseness, and dishonesty--and I was disgusted.

January 26th, at sea, near Bourbon
The afflicting question of slavery constantly recurs to my mind. Had you, like me, seen the sales of slaves at Rio, you would be unceasingly tormented by the recollection of them

The colossal extension of the British power is a blessing. There are doubtless many iniquities, many odious falsehoods in the national and colonial government of that nation, but it proscribes atrocities everywhere.

The stranger, of whose strength we could not judge from his position, but which all the officers asserted to be a ship of war, asked us in English,--What ship ours was?--to which I replied, that he was very impudent to think of asking such a question--and must immediately tell us who he was. He spoke again, without our being able to understand each other; but his attitude became more and more hostile. We thought that he meditated boarding. Immediately, a turn of the helm placed us so that we could fire with advantage. We then game him a broadside of round and grape shot; and then, directly, while all the guns were being reloaded, so worked the ship so that our second broadside should not be waited for; But the stranger seemed stopped. I remounted the poop, and thence, with a gigantic speaking trumpet, the only one of real used, ordered him to bring to, and an officer to come on board, or we should continue our fire....As people are not very patient, when they have sixteen guns ready to pour forth their contents, without any more trouble than saying, "Fire!" the captain and M. de Melay, who now thought the stranger a pirate, and owed him a grudge for the trouble he had given, begged me to repeat the threat of complete destruction if the boat was not immediately sent So I sacrificed my larynx to play the stentor, and with success.

But in the tumult of clearing for action, a man had been badly wounded; yesterday he was obliged to make up his mind to lose his fore-arm. Our young doctor had never performed any operations any more than myself; and this was a grand affair for him. I had the pleasure of being very useful to him, by first encouraging him, and then assisting him at the critical moment. I tied the arteries. Tell Jules Cloquet, that instead of tying only three, the radial, the cubital, and the inter-osseous, I tied five, without hurrying any more than if I had been operating upon a dead body; and if you, my dear father, or Porphyre, say again that Victor is awkward with his hands, I will send you a certificate to the contrary, written upon stamped paper, and signed by twenty witnesses.

The Afghans are very inferior to the Sikhs, and are, at most, just strong enough to do battle from time to time with Runjeet Sing.

This latter disciplines his little army in the European fashion, and almost all his officers are French.

Runjeet Sing, to maintain his little army (from thirty to forty thousand men) upon a European footing, is obliged to grind his country with imposts, which are ruining it. Several of his provinces are calling for the British; and I do not doubt that some day or other (but not for some years to come) the Company will extend the limits of its empire from the Sutledge to the Indus. It is not a hundred years since the Punjab was dismembered from it, after the invasion of Nadir Shah, and this country naturally forms a part of it… The religion is nearly the same, the language also scarcely differs, and the course of the seasons is the same. But the British will make this conquest only at the last extremity. All that they have added to their territory, for the last fifty years, beyond Bengal and Bahar, beyond the empire which Colonel Clive had formed, has only diminished their revenues. Not one of the acquired provinces pays the expenses of its government and military occupation.

The fashion of Sanscrit and literary Orientalism in general, will last nevertheless; for those who may have spent or lost fifteen or twenty years in learning Arabic or Sanscrit, will not have the candour to admit that they possess a useless piece of knowledge.

In Tibet, which contains one or two inhabitants per square league, ...they sing a great deal also, but only a single song of three words, “Oum mani pani,” signifying, in the learned language which neither the villagers nor their lamas understand, “”Oh! Diamond water-lily!” and leads the singers straight into Budha’s paradise.

Laugh intensely at * * * in my name and at his accidents by flood and field. Tell him that I am several months without hearing the sound of a European voice, also that my dinner is fundamentally detestable;--and that I do not complain..