59 



on any good evidence*. I shall not decide the 

 question, whether Gemelli visited China or 

 Persia ; but, having travelled in the interior of 

 Mexico a great part of the road, which the 

 Italian traveller so minutely describes, I can 

 affirm it to be no less certain, that Gemelli- was 

 in Mexico, at Acapulco, and the small villages of 

 Mazatlan and of San Augustin de las Cuevas, 

 than that Pallas has been in the Crimea, and 

 Mr. Salt in Abyssinia. Gemelli's descriptions 

 have that local tint, which is the principal charm 

 of the narratives of travels, written by the most 

 unlettered men ; and which can be given only by 

 those who have been ocular witnesses of what 

 they describe. A respectable ecclesiastic, Abb6 

 Clavigero^, who traversed Mexico almost half a 

 century before me, had already undertaken the 

 defence of the author del Giro del Mondo ; and 

 has very justly observed, that, had Gemelli never 

 left Italy, it was impossible that he could have 

 spoken with so much accuracy of persons, who 

 lived in his time, of the convents of the city of 

 Mexico, and of the churches of several villages, 

 the names of which were unknown in Europe. 

 The same tone of veracity, and we must insist 

 on this point, does not appear in the notions, 

 which the author professes to have borrowed 



* Robertson's History of America, 1803, vol. iii, p. 418. 



t Storia Antka di Messico, vol. i, p. 24. 



