lxxiv PREFATORY LETTER. 



— perhaps then as a Christian brother. But that additional 

 happiness was not granted us. 



I have now, My dear Sir, complied with a part of your 

 request, and brought my sketch of our friend's long journey 

 in Africa, to a close. If I have been slow in the performance 

 of my promise, I have a good excuse to offer you in my behalf. 

 When I began my letter in March, I hoped to finish it in three 

 or four days; and what I first wrote was, without delay, 

 sent to the press and set up in type. But I soon became 

 too ill to go on with my task; and to my sorrow, it was 

 interrupted for several weeks : and when I had again taken 

 up my pen, I was too often compelled to lay it down again, 

 after I had written a few sentences — sometimes insufficient 

 to make a single paragraph. Thus it has happened that the 

 press has been very ill supplied by me, and that I have so 

 long detained your work from the public. The assertion may 

 appear strange to you; but it is true, that the weary and 

 sometimes painful manner in which I have been writing, has 

 led me into details that I hardly thought of when I began; 

 and has caused me to drag out my letter to an unreasonable 

 length, in contradiction to some of the very words which 

 are printed in its early pages. Certainly it is of, at least, 

 four or five times the length I thought of when I began. But 

 let me not detain you, or the reader, with any more of my 

 apologies. 



If you ask me what have been the objects I had most 

 in view while I was writing the previous sketch, I reply — 

 that I in the first place wished to shew the true character of a 

 Christian hero through the clear light of his own works — 

 through the constancy, and faith, and courage, and wisdom, 

 which supported him in the midst of many dangers and 

 great trials; and at length brought him safely out of them, 

 and restored him in honour to his friends and countrymen. 



Secondly, I hoped to bring out, from the graphic deline- 

 ations of our Author, the true character of the Natives of 



