voyages and travels" Collections 176) A NEW COLLECTION O F VOYAGES, DISCOVERIES and TRAVELS: CONTAINING Whatever is worthy of Notice, in AFRICA and AMERICA: IN RESPECT T The Situation and Extent of Empires; Kingdoms, and W LIBRARY The Manners and Cuftoms of the feveral Inhabitants; The whole confifting of fuch ENGLISH and FOREIGN Authors Illuftrated with a Variety of accurate, MAPS, PLANS, and elegant ENGRAVINGS. IN SEVEN VOLUMES. VOL. I. LONDON: Printed for J. KNOX, near Southampton-Street, f PREFACE. EW books are more pleafing or inftructive than those which contain accounts of travels or voyages, into diftant countries. But at the fame time, no writers feem more incapable of describing what they fee, or more liable to be impofed upon by others, than many of those to whom we owe productions of this nature. The lot of vifiting foreign climates; or Gravering: vage lands, has generally fallen to the avaritious or the devout, men whofe views were contracted by gain, ar blinded by fuperftition thus through in general they tell us what they have obferved, their accounts are mixed with inflances of grofs ignorance, or miftaken zeal. We generally find their productions loaded with minute and uninteresting tranfactions, falfe miracles, nautical remarks, or tedious diaries, which fatigue the reader and reprefs curiofity. The being acquainted with the world from books of this kind, thus becoming a task almost as difficult as vifiting in perfon the places they defcribe; and the numbers of fuch books ftill increafing the difficulty, it was by many thought advifeable to reduce the number, and retrench the abfurdities of fuch works by compilation. To this we owe the many Collections of voyages and travels that have been publifhed at different times among us, all profeffing to afford the reader A 2 the |