• 1745−1747 Green, John
  A new general collection of voyages and travels …
  London 1745: Thomas Astley
  → Zeitleiste Reisesammlungen

THE first Volume of our Collection being now compleated, it may be expected, that something should be said concerning the Design and Manner of executing it.

IT would be needless to expatiate on the Advantages of Works of this Kind. Every body knows that their Use is to preserve valuable Books from being loft, render scarce Books common, and to bring the best Authors relating to all Parts of the into one Body. This has produced so many large Collections of Voyages and Travels in various Languages as Grinæus and de Bry in Latin, Ramusio in Italian and Thevenot in French, not to mention several other smaller Collections in the same Languages. But no Nation hath published so many Books of this Sort as our own: For we have already no fewer than three large general Collections in English, Hakluyt in three Volumes Folio, Purchas in four (exclusive of his Pilgrimage) and Harris in two.

AS to Churchill's though consisting of six great Folios it is no more than an Assemblage of the Travels of about fifty particular Authors to a few Parts of the World and therefore we do not place it among the general Collections. Besides this essential Defect, the Authors made use of care, for the most Part, of very little Esteem. They seem to have been gathered without Judgment or Care, and chosen (if there was any Choice made at all) rather for their Imperfections than Merit. Some are swelled with scarce any Thing but the Transactions, and even the Disputes, of Missionaries: Others, though very bulky, consist of Matters foreign to the Subject, as Monson's naval Tracts, which take up the greater Part of the third Volume, and have no more Business in a Collection of Travels than any other naval History extant: So that the Substance, in effect, of the whole six Volumes might easily be comprized in two.

WHAT is still worse, the foreign Authors are very badly translated, and those employed for that Purpose have been religiously scrupulous to retain all Superstuities both in the Matter and Stile, though they have frequently made bold to mistake their Authors, Sense most egregiously and sometimes to castrate them greatly to their Disadvantage. The Part best executed in the Whole, though very dry, is the Introduction, which some People without the least Grounds, would fain persuade the Public was written by the great Mr Locke: But the manifold Imperfections of this Collection sufficiently confute that Pretence.

NOTWITHSTANDING there are so many Collections of Voyages already extant, yet as Materials for this Purpose are continually encreasing, and new Discoveries daily made, there will always be the same Necessity from Time to Time of publishing new Collections, or, at least, Additions to the old. This occasioned Hakluyt to set-forth his second Edition, with great Improvements in 1599, ten Years after his first, Purchas to exhibit a new Work in 1625, and Harris to do the like in 1705.

THE Design of these several Collectors, was to publish in one Body all the best Authors from the Revival of Commerce, and Discoveries, about the thirteenth Age, to their own Times: But to avoid swelling their Work to too great a Bulk, they were obliged to omit many of the most valuable. Hakluyt for this Reason confined himself mostly to the English Travellers: But although he wrote within fifty Years of the first Navigations of this Nation, and added two thick Volumes in his second Edition, yet he was forced to leave-out a great Number of curious Tracts, which afterwards were published by Purchas. This Collector proposed to join many foreign Authors to the English, and as he enlarged his Plan so be augmented his Volumes in Bulk and Number: Yet still be found himself greatly stinted for Room, insomuch, that to bring those he had provided within the Compass of bis four Volumes of Pilgrims, he was under a Necessity of curtailing bis Authors in such a Manner as to retrench several of their most essential Parts, and consequently to render bis Work in great Measure useless.

THE Compilers of that which goes under the Name of Dr. Harris (for he only wrote the Dedication and Introduction) undertook, at fourscore Years Distance, in which Time Books of Voyages and Travels were confiderably multiplied, to execute the same Design in much the same Compass as Purchas had done: Or rather to give us the Shadow of a general Collection and the Skeletons of Authors, instead of the Substance; which, in effect, is the Case: For they have not only omitted a great Number of the most valuable Relations to be found in Hakluyt and Purchas, which do Honour to our Nation, as well as many of those published since they wrote, but have quite spoiled the rest by bad Abridgments: Those which Purchas had published entire, are by them miserably curtailed, and the Authors, which that Collector had mangled before, (that is all be abridged) are mangled over again.

BESIDES the above-mentioned Imperfections under which this last Collection labours, it being near forty Years since it was published, a great Number of curious Voyages and Travels have appeared, which want to be collected.

FOR these Reasons the Author of the present Undertaking judged a new general Collection to be necessary, which he proposed to execute according to the following Plan.

FIRST, To insert the Relations from Hakluyt and Purchas omitted in Harris's Collection, as well as those taken from them. Secondly, To restore all the Authors castrated in Harris as well as those maimed by Purchas, so far as he hath been able to come at the Originals. Thirdly To take-in not only some English Travellers omitted by Purchas, but also several others published since Purchas, and omitted in Harris. Fourthly, To add the Travellers of any Note, which have appeared in our Language since 1705 when Dr Harris's Collection was published. Fifthly, To enrich this Collection with a considerable Number of foreign Itineraries, which were never made English before.

IT would be Time enough perhaps, when the whole Work was finished, to shew that be bad performed his Engagements, and yet the Collector is of Opinion, that this Volume affords abundant Proof, that he has fulfilled his Proposal.

WITH respect to the first Article, he refers to the Voyages of Stephens and Raymond to East India, Windham, Lok, &c to Guinea. He conceives, that the second is already made good by every Author inserted from Hakluyt and Purchas, for they are all carefully abridged without omitting any material Circumstance, or adding Fancies of his own, which alter the Sense as has been done by the Compilers of Harris's Collection: That the third Condition is executed in Part by the Voyages of Captain Covert to the East Indies, those of Windham, Vennor &c to Guinea, omitted by Purchas: That the Journies up the Pike of Teneriffe, and the Voyages of Captain Roberts to the Cape de Verde Islands, make-good the fourth Condition, and that the fifth is performed by the Voyages of Soleyman Basha, Cada Mosto, Pedro de Sintra, and several other Translations.

THE better to succeed in this last Article, we have been careful to procure the best Authors to be met with, and to search not only the great foreign Collections already mentioned for curious Tracts as have not yet been translated from them, but also the smaller: Such as those …

… of the Dutch to the North and the East Indies the Lettres Edifiantes Memoires des Missions and several other foreign literary Journals. Not forgetting the Memoirs of the Academy of Paris and our own Philosophical Transactions which afford several curious Relations. Farther to improve our Design we have as Occasion required, thrown in certain short Pieces or Extracts relating to the History Government or Religions of foreign Nations especially the Oriental taken chiefly from their own Authors in order to supply the Travellers who bave not always had an Opportunity of obtaining an exact Knowledge of those Matters. Of this the Description of the Red Sea from Abu‚lfeda the Discovery of Madera by Alcaforado and more particularly the History of the Portugueze Conquests in India with which the Volume begins, are Instances.

ALTHOUGH our Design is much more extensive than that of any Collection hitherto published yet we propose to execute it in less Room than any of the former. To effect this we have deviated from the common Method of collecting and instead of giving each Author entire in the Order he was published we separate his Journal and Adventures from his Remarks on Countries. The first we give by itself, the latter we incorporate with the Remarks of other Travellers to the same Parts. THE Adventures of Travellers are generally very tedious often trifling, and therefore admit of large Retrenchments and as several Travellers visiting the same Parts must necessarily repeat the same Things, it is certain, that by this Way of collecting them a vast deal of superfluous Matter will be expunged and consequently Room made for introducing many more than could possibly be brought into the same Compass, according to the common Method. It is true, Purchas and Harris, with a View to obtain the same End, have not only abridged their Travellers, but endeavoured to avoid Repetition. To effect this, their Course was, after giving one Author intire to strike out of the rest all such Remarks as seemed to be of the same Nature with those made by the first. But it is obvious, that this Method will make strange Havock with the Books as it must render most of them so curtailed and imperfect that the Reader will have only Parts or Pieces of an Author instead of the Whole and this in such an abrupt and unconnected Manner that the Completeness of the few will in no Sort supply or compensate for the Deficiences of the many. The Injury will extend even to the uncastrated Relations: For if some Remarks be struck-out of four Travellers for Instance in five the four will not only be deprived of the Right and Property which they had in them equal to the fifth, but the fifth will be left destitute of the Vouchers requisite to support what he relates. These ill Consequences are the necessary Effect of this Way of managing Authors whereas they are intirely avoided by the Method made use of in this Collection. For by incorporating the Remarks of several Travellers together with proper References the Whole will be preserved as well as every particular Author's Property therein ascertained and distinguished at the Same Time that Repetition and Redundancy will be prevented.

BESIDES these considerable Advantages other great Benefits flow from this Way of Collecting. In the first Place, the Reader, by finding all that relates to the same Things in several Authors brought together, will be saved the Trouble of turning from one to the other, in order to collect their scattered Remarks on every Subject, as well as avoid being tired with reading, or charged with paying for the same Things several Times over in different Authors. At the same Time instead of a great many imperfect Accounts which the Authors separately afford be will be furnished with one complete Description compiled from them all And thus our Collection becomes a System of Modern Geography and History as well as a Body Voyages and Travels exhibiting the Present State of all Nations in the most concise yet comprehensive Manner.

THIS Method has likewise contributed not a little to render the Work more perfect and accurate: For by having the Remarks of several Authors before him in one View, a Collector is best able to see their Errors and Defects, an,d consequently to adjust correct and supply them.

VIII …