PREFACE. 



Cajpe, at an unfavourable period, and the many 

 hardships endured by Captains Bligh, Wilson, and 

 others, whose descriptions were now the daily sub- 

 jects of our conversation, rendered all equally de- 

 sirous that no unnecessary dehiys should be made, 

 so as to endanger our experiencing any thing simi- 

 lar." Langsdorff, p. 77. For the dangers and 

 difficulties the Russian navigator encountered in his 

 passage round the Cape, the author must content 

 himself with referring the reader to pages 79, 80^ 

 81, and 82, of Langs do rff. 



The author has reserved the account of the 

 Preux Chevalier of all voyagers. Commodore 

 Anson, as the last authority he shall produce on 

 this head. 



" Some among us had lately treated the dangers 

 and difficulties which former voyagers were said to 

 have met with in this undertaking, as little better 

 than chimerical; and had supposed them to arise 

 Father from timidity and unskilfulness, than from 

 the embarrassments of the winds and seas. But 

 we were now severely convinced, that these cen- 

 sures were rash and ill grounded ; for the distresses 

 with which we struggled for nearly three months, 

 will not easily be paralleled in the relation of any 

 preceding expedition. From the storm which came 

 on before we had well got through the Straits 

 Le Maire, we had a continued succession of such 

 tempestuous weather, as sin*prised the oldest and 

 most experienced mariners on board, and obliged 

 them to confess, that what they had hitherto called 

 storms, were inconsiderable gales compared with 

 the violence of the winds, which raised such short, 

 and, at the same time, such mountainous waves, as 

 greatly surpassed in danger all seas known in any 

 other part of the globe : and it was not without 



