The BOOKSELLER’s Advertisement. To the READER.

Having in the former part of this Collection given an authentic account of the proceedings and discoveries of the English navigators who have lately surrounded the globe; and also a copious detail of the voyage of a cotemporary navigator of another nation, who, jealous of the English designs, was commissioned to follow the same track. That the present undertaking may not want novelty to recommend it, I have procured, at a considerable expence, the journal of a new voyage to the northern part of the globe; a voyage which his Majesty, in a particular manner, has thought fit to patronize, and which was equipped with such care and circumspection, that nothing was found wanting during the course of it.

This voyage I have added by way of Supplement, without any additional expence to the subscribers; and have prefixed to it a brief recapitulation of the many attempts that have been made for the discovery of a north-east passage to China and Japan, and also have subjoined a like summary of the enterprizes set on foot by government, or undertaken by private adventurers, for discovering a communication with the great pacific ocean by a passage from the north-west.

These accounts are full of astonishing events, and wonderful descriptions of uncommon phenomena. In them we read of rivers and lakes of ice, bursting with imprisoned vapours; and of rocks, forests, beams of houses and buildings, splitting with a noise not less terrible than the loudest thunder.⁠—Of brandy, Brine, and even spirits of wine, exposed to the open air, only for a few hours, freezing into a solid mass.⁠—Of mountains of ice frozen in the sea one hundred fathom deep.⁠—Of snow hills that never thaw.⁠—And of winds that blister the flesh, and shrivel the skin like red-hot iron.

In this Supplement the distresses, dangers, providential deliverances, and unspeakable sufferings of those who have wintered in the dark and dreary regions of the north, are recounted with clearness and brevity; and, in the small compass of a few sheets, the contents of many volumes are comprized.