ier, we cannot doubt that the interior and exterior
of those countries would have been much better known than they are at
present; because such a person would rather have chosen to have refreshed
in the island of New Britain, or some other country not visited before,
than at that of Timer, already settled both by the Portuguese and the
Dutch.

In all attempts, therefore, of this sort, those men are fittest to be
employed who, with competent abilities as seamen, have likewise general
capacities, are at least tolerably acquainted with other sciences, and
have settled judgments and solid understandings. These are the men from
whom we are to expect the finishing that great work which former
circumnavigators have begun; I mean the discovering every part and parcel
of the globe, and the carrying to its utmost perfection the admirable and
useful science of navigation.

It is, however, a piece of justice due to the memory of these great men,
to acknowledge that we are equally encouraged by their examples and
guided by their discoveries. We owe to them the being freed, not only
from the errors, but from the doubts and difficulties with which former
ages were oppressed; to them we stand indebted for the discovery of the
best part of the world, which was entirely unknown to the ancients,
particularly some part of the eastern, most of the southern, and all the
western hemisphere; from them we have learned that the earth is
surrounded by the ocean, and that all the countries under the torrid zone
are inhabited, and that, quite contrary to the notions that were formerly
entertained, they are very far from being the most sultry climate in the
world, those within a few degrees of the tropics, though habitable, being
much more hot, for reasons which have been elsewhere explained. By their
voyages, and especially by the observations of Columbus, we have been
taught the general motion of the sea, the reason of it, and the cause and
difference of currents in particular places, to which we may add the
doctrine of tides, which were very imperfectly known, even by the
greatest men in former times, whose accounts have been found equally
repugnant to reason and experience.

By their observations we have acquired a great knowledge as to the nature
and variation of winds, particularly the monsoons, or trade winds, and
other periodical winds, of which the ancients had not the least
conception; and by these helps we not only have it in our pow