PREFACE. 
Tubs e memoirs are founded on a series of letters written during a 
long residence in India. A variety of new and interesting matter 
collected from valuable and accurate sources, has induced me to 
alter their original form, and present them to the world in the 
shape of a connected narrative. I consider this explanation neces- 
sary, to account for the epistolary style, and occasional repetitions, 
which will be found to pervade them. 
Leaving England before I had attained my sixteenth year, and 
being, while in India, deprived of a choice of books, I lay no 
claim to literary merit. I am conscious of numerous defects in a 
work commenced at that early age, and continued for eighteen 
years in the India Company’s service, when duty stationed me at 
many of their settlements, and curiosity led me to other places, in 
the western provinces of Hind os tan. 
Diffident as I am of this performance, I deem myself, in some 
degree, pledged to publish it, in consequence of the following 
correspondence with the National Institute at Paris; which was 
the immediate cause of procuring the liberation of myself and 
family from captivity. I also asssign as another reason, that some 
of my letters at full length, and copious extracts from others, have 
appeared in several late publications, without being ascribed to . 
their real author. 
