 Lin also purchased a copy of the 1834 "Encyclopedia of Geography" by Hugh Murray from the American Board of Commissioners for Foreign Missions, which Liang translated to become the draft for Lin's own "Geography of the Four Continents" ().However, before the book could be published, the First Opium War broke out in 1839 and the project was shelved.When the war ended in 1842, Lin's exile to the remote northwestern city of Yili meant that he passed his draft manuscript to Wei Yuan with a request that he complete it.