than the
coasts of unknown countries, and make short and imperfect observations of
things only near the shore. But whoever is experienced in these matters,
or considers things impartially, will be of a very different opinion. And
anyone who is sensible how backward and refractory the seamen are apt to
be in long voyages when they know not whither they are going, how
ignorant they are of the nature of the winds and the shifting seasons of
the monsoons, and how little even the officers themselves generally are
skilled in the variation of the needle and the use of the azimuth
compass; besides the hazard of all outward accidents in strange and
unknown seas: anyone, I say, who is sensible of these difficulties will
be much more pleased at the discoveries and observations I have been able
to make than displeased with me that I did not make more.

Thus much I thought necessary to premise in my own vindication against
the objections that have been made to my former performances. But not to
trouble the reader any further with matters of this nature; what I have
more to offer shall be only in relation to the following voyage.

For the better apprehending the course of this voyage and the situation
of the places mentioned in it I have here, as in the former volumes,
caused a map to be engraven with a pricked line representing to the eye
the whole thread of the voyage at one view, besides charts and figures of
particular places, to make the descriptions I have given of them more
intelligible and useful.

Moreover, which I had not opportunity of doing in my former voyages;
having now had in the ship with me a person skilled in drawing, I have by
this means been enabled, for the greater satisfaction of the curious
reader, to present him with exact cuts and figures of several of the
principal and most remarkable of those birds, beasts, fishes and plants,
which are described in the following narrative; and also of several
which, not being able to give any better or so good an account of, as by
causing them to be exactly engraven, the reader will not find any further
description of them, but only that they were found in such or such
particular countries. The plants themselves are in the hands of the
ingenious Dr. Woodward. I could have caused many others to be drawn in
like manner but that I resolved to confine myself to such only as had
some very remarkable difference in the shape of their principal parts
from any that are found in E