PREFACE, 
TThe Voyage which is here presented to the public has no pretensions to 
new discoveries, and can boast but little of its collection of new and im- 
portant facts. It will conduct the reader precisely over the same ground 
which a much abler writer has previously occupied in " The Authentic 
Account of an Embassy to China " and in whose hands were placed, in 
fact, a great part of the materials of which it is composed. The expecta- 
tion, therefore, of new discoveries and extraordinary occurrences, which 
in books of voyages and travels is alone sufficient to keep the attention 
constantly on the stretch, should only be indulged to a moderate degree in 
the perusal of the present work. Yet although the ground may already have 
been trodden, the range is so extensive, the prospects so various, and the 
objects so numerous, that new scenes are not difficult to be exhibited, nor 
those before observed to be sketched in different positions, as seen from 
different points of view. The lapse of ten or twelve years, having ma- 
terially changed the aspect of the political horizon in every part of the 
world, has also given scope for new- suggestions and reflections which 
could not exist when the voyage was made, but which are particularly ap- 
plicable to the present time. Besides, every foreign country, though it 
may have been visited by fifty different voyagers, will still present something 
new for the observation of the fifty-first. Such a variety of objects pass before 
the view of an attentive traveller, affording so wide a range for observa- 
tion and reflection, that, there is little danger of the materials, being speedily 
a 
