PREFACE.

Perhaps there never was brought together, in so small a compass, in any language, a more copious collection of rational entertainment, than will be met with in the following sheets. To trace the progress of the discoveries that have successively been made, in passing round the globe, must fill the reader’s mind with such a variety of new objects, as cannot fail to raise his wonder, and entertain him with infinite delight.

He will, in this work, be safely conducted through regions that were once thought inaccessible, and be made acquainted with countries altogether different from that in which he dwells. Every page he reads will furnish him with novelties, and every Voyage will bring him nearer to that unknown country, in search of which so many able commanders have been sent in vain.

The discovery of the western continent by Columbus, gave geographers reason to believe, that a like continent existed somewhere in the south. Without such an equipoise they could not conceive how the globe could preserve its balance.

Magellhaens, a Portuguese mariner, was the first who attempted to immortalize his name by the discovery. He passed the Streights, that to this day bear his name, and entered the Pacific Ocean, where no European vessel had ever sailed before. He discovered the Ladrone and Phillippine Isles, and returned by the Cape of Good Hope, having surrounded the whole earth, and proved, to demonstration, the spherical figure of the globe.

He was followed by navigators of different nations, who, emulous of his glory, sought to pursue the track, which he had pointed out, with better success; but the dangers they encountered, and the disasters they met with, rendered the difficulties that attended the prosecution insurmountable; many perished, and those who survived were glad to return home after a fruitless search.

The ill success which attended these first attempts threw a damp upon the enterprize, and it remained long unnoticed, except in the writings of the learned. Some French geographers, fully persuaded of the reality of such a continent, endeavoured, a few years ago, to revive in their countrymen the spirit of enterprize, with a view to derive honour to their country, by compleating the discovery; but the taste for great navigations among the French seemed entirely extinct, and it was not till the Dolphin and Tamar had sailed from England that they thought of renewing it.

We have been told that his Majesty, our most gracious Sovereign, very early in life, formed the design of distinguishing himself by patronizing the prosecution of new discoveries in the unknown regions of the southern hemisphere; and that he declared his intention, soon after he came to the crown, of appropriating a part of his revenue for that particular purpose. Nothing can more endear a British monarch to his maritime people, than a steady perseverance in this laudable resolution.

The love of glory is a passion natural to Kings; the conquerors of the world are placed before them as patterns, and they are encouraged by example to seek occasions for war to acquire a name. But how much more glorious is it to enlarge the earth with a new region, than to triumph in the conquest of some rival state!⁠—to extend protection to a remote, and it may be, a defenceless people, than to boast of levelling fortresses, and, by a general carnage of friends and foes, become master of a few desolated towns, purchased at an expence, a thousand times greater than what is necessary to insure the success of new discoveries.

Can there be any comparison between the glory of a successful enterprize, founded on the laudable motives of diffusing happiness through regions, whose inhabitants, for ought we know, are yet immersed in savage darkness; and that of engaging in a hazardous war, by which millions of treasure must be expended, and thousands of lives sacrificed? Is not the chance of succeeding in the first case much more probable than that of conquering in the other? And does not success in the discovery of the long sought region of the south, promise much greater advantages to a trading nation, than the conquest of any part of the earth on this side the globe? Did not the little Phœnician state reap a more glorious harvest from the discoveries of its merchants, than Alexander could boast from all his conquests? Was it not the perseverance of the Princes Henry, John, and Emanuel, in supporting the charges of prosecuting new discoveries in the fifteenth century, that laid the foundation of the Portuguese greatness, whose territories in Europe are of no considerable extent?

If the glory of aggrandizing a state, and perpetuating a name to posterity be the first object of human ambition, where, among all the tyrants who have depopulated the earth, can be produced a conqueror, whose name will be remembered, when that of Christopher Columbus is forgotten? Or where shall we look for a monarch, who, after having spread murder and desolation throughout the world, descended to the grave with that heart-felt satisfaction that attended the Florentine merchant Americus Vespucius, when he saw all Europe agreeing, with one consent, to transfer his name to more than a third part of the terrestrial globe?

The success which has attended our gracious Monarch’s first essays in the Voyages we are now about to relate, though it has yet produced no solid advantages to compensate the sums expended in the prosecution of them, yet it has been such as to open the way to new islands, from whose inhabitants new arts may be learnt, and from whose productions new acquisitions may be made, both to the vegetable and fossil kingdoms, by which the regions of science may be enlarged, and the gardens of the curious enriched and beautified.

It is no small satisfaction to an inquisitive mind (were there no other advantage to be gained from these Voyages) to be made acquainted with the genius, the arts, the various pursuits, the customs, the manners, the religious notions, the distinctions of rank, and the subordination that is to be met with among the people of various islands and countries, distinct from each other, and from us, in language, habits, learning, and ways of living. Who is it that can read of the poverty and misery of the wretched inhabitants of Terra del Fuego, who have nothing but the skins of beasts loosely thrown over them, to defend them from the severity of the cold, in a climate so dreadful, that two out of twelve of the attendants of Mr. Banks and Dr. Solander, being overtaken in a storm, in a clear evening, in the middle of summer, perished at the foot of a mountain, though they had but two miles to go to receive succour? Nor are they, in any respect, better provided with food than with raiment. The woods that are three parts in four of the year impenetrable on account of the snow, and the sea-coast and rivers that are equally inaccessible, are their only resources. Who then, I say, can read the story of these forlorn creatures, without lamenting the condition of human beings, destitute, as these appear to be, of every comfort and convenience, and exposed every moment to the piercing rigour of the climate, and the still severer cravings of unsatisfied hunger!

On the contrary, who can think of these, while, at the same time, he is told of the pleasurable lives of the happy islanders in the new-discovered countries, who abound in flesh, fish, and fruits, even to profusion! without admiring the ways of Providence, that, for purposes unknown to us, has so unequally bestowed its dispensations.

When we read in these Voyages of men that eat men, not for hunger, but from savage ferocity, we shudder to think of the depravity of our nature, and are convinced of the necessity of bounding our passions by wholesome laws, and of correcting the irregularities of our appetites by the restraints of religion.

But what can we think of those civilized Barbarians, of those polished monsters, who, with all the advantages of religion and enlightened education, could yet be so wantonly cruel, as to introduce a disease among a happy people, odious in its nature, and, to them, more pernicious than a pestilence in its effects; who could carry the venereal taint between the tropics, and entail it as a curse upon those by whom they were most highly favoured?

Who but must regret the friendly hospitality of these honest, unsuspecting islanders to strangers, the very best of whom but ill-deserved their favours? But who can with-hold his indignation at the ingratitude of the meaner sort, with which their benefactors were requited?

The variety of incidents that happened in the course of these Voyages, when they come to be historically recited, unencumbered with the jargon of sea-phrases, will afford a fund of entertainment, seldom to be met with in the productions of the press. The many singular adventures, unforeseen dangers, and providential escapes, that every ship experienced in passing round the globe, can only be conceived by those who read, and believed by those who have seen the wonders of the deep.

Nothing can excite or gratify curiosity more than relations of marvellous events that happen in succession, and in circumstances equally critical and important. The moment a ship launches into the ocean to proceed on new discoveries, every man on board demands his share of attention as well as the commanding officer. The story of the black, who, with his two companions, perished on the mountains of Terra del Fuego, is no less affecting than that of the murder of the poor Indians, who set the Endeavour at defiance, and bravely opposed the landing of the crew.

There is not an object that presents itself either by sea or land, but affords some degree of use or speculation. The fish that swarm about the ship, and the fowls that present themselves in the ocean, are indications by which the skilful mariner avails himself, either to guard against the storm, or to prepare for land; and the reader, as circumstances arise, either shares his danger, or partakes of his refreshment.

When the Endeavour is encircled in the wide ocean with rocks of coral, her sheathing beaten off, and her false keel floating by her side, a hole in her bottom, and the men alternately fainting at the pumps, what heart is so callous, as not to sympathize with the despairing crew, and, anxious for their safety, drop a tear for their deliverance?

And what must be the joy of every feeling heart, when, after sailing many hundred leagues, and arriving safe at Batavia, it was found that two of her planks next the keel, and part of a third in the ship’s bottom, were, for six feet together, rubbed thinner, by her friction against the rocks, than the ordinary sole of a man’s shoe!

Who that shall interest himself in the fate of Toobaiah, an Indian priest, who voluntarily offered himself as a guide against the attacks of the neighbouring islanders, and of the Indian youth Tayota, who accompanied him, but must regret the death of the last, and admire the more than Christian friendship of the former, who could not long survive the loss of his companion?

It is to bring together a vast variety of interesting events, and to relate them in a narrow compass, that the present work is undertaken. The Writers of Voyages, having a more important object in view than mere amusement, are under the necessity of interrupting the thread of their narrations by the workings of the ship, the bearings and distances of the capes and bays, the latitudes and longitudes of the various stations in which their ships cast anchor, the variations of the needle, and the soundings of the shores; matters, though of infinite concern to future navigators, and without which the Voyages themselves would be useless, yet are of no moment to the generality of readers, who are curious only to know what dangers were encountered, what adventures were met with, what lands discovered, what people possessed them, what novelties were seen, what new arts were practised, what wars were carried on, what weapons and utensils were in use, and, above all, by what laws, religion, and forms of government, the various nations were distinguished that lie scattered round the globe.

These subjects of entertainment the reader will find amply reported in the course of the Volumes now presented to his view. And as the relations are authenticated by gentlemen of known veracity, who were eye-witnesses, and bear testimony to the truth of the facts, the reader will find uncommon pleasure in the perusal.