TO 
THE KING. 
In availing myself of \ our Majesty’s gracious permission to dedi- 
cate this work to Your Majesty, I feel that I am performing a most 
pleasing duty. 
The claims of Your Majesty’s family on the gratitude of the 
nation, for the efficient patronage they have afforded to maritime dis- 
coveiy, require merely to be alluded to, to ensure the attention of 
every well-wisher to his country. 
Under a less powerful Sovereign than your Eoyal Father, the 
voyages of Cook and Vancouver, in all probability, would never have 
een projected, and could hardly have prospered; while it is certain 
peditions of Parry and Frankhn owed their chief distinction 
to the enlightened encouragement of His late Majesty. 
But these great enterprises— so productive of national renown— so 
extensively useful in diffusing the blessings of civiUsation over distant 
and savage lands-and so eminently beneficial to the cause of science 
and of commerce, could never have been successfully accomplished, had 
