Ixxxii authok's preface. 



cannot be expected that a Desart Island should furnish nie 

 with such ample Matter, as Travellers commonly meet with 

 in the inhabited Countries which they Visit. I found 

 neither Cities nor Temples, nor Palaces, nor Cabinets of 

 Earities, nor Antique Monuments, nor Academies, nor Lib- 

 raries, nor People, on whose Eeligion, Language, Govern- 

 ment, Manners and Customs, I might make Observations. 

 I have said already, and I say it again, that all that can 

 make this small Treatise, which I have been encourag'd to 

 present you with, any way valuable, is in the first place, the 

 particularity and variety of the Facts and Adventures. To 

 dwell two years in a Desart; to be sav'd by a Miracle; to 

 fall from Charyhdis upon Scylla^ as the ancient Proverb 

 says ; to suffer a thousand Miseries for three years together 

 on a dry liock, by an unheard of Persecution; to be deliver'd 

 contrary to Appearance and Hope, and with such strange 

 Circumstances, must certainly have something very Singular 

 in it. What is Secondly valuable in this Relation, is the 

 pure and simple truth of all I have related. It never 

 enter'd into my Thoughts to adorn my History, to exag- 

 gerate any thing at the expence of that Truth, which I have 

 always Respected. And I will add for your Satisfaction, 

 that there are living^ Witnesses of every thing I have re- 

 ported. Among the things which those that have Travell'd 

 last in the Countries that are known and describ'd, report, 

 'tis unavoidable but there must be something which the 

 first Travellers make no mention of; Be it as it will with 

 respect to my self, when I talk of the Cape of Good Hope, 

 Baiavia, and other Places treated of in other Voyages, I 

 sj)eak of those things that I thought worth observing, with- 

 out troubling myself whether others have made any mention 



1 "inczV/z's in Scyllam cupiens vitare Charybdim" (Alexandreis, lib. v, 

 301, by Philippe Gaultier. 13tli century.) 



^ In orig. : " deux Temoins," i.e., MM. Paul Benelle, at Amsterdam, 

 and Jacques de La Case, in America. (Vide ante, p. xxxiii, et j)ost, 

 p. 392.) 



