The intelligent Reader will bear testimony to not a few. It were needless to enumerate the many volumes consulted on this occasion. If the Editor may claim any merit for the part he has taken in the performance, it is in collecting together in the introduction, a short, and, he hopes, not an unentertaining summary of all the Voyages undertaken for discovery only, in both the Southern and Northern Hemispheres, and in both the Pa|cific and Atlantic Oceans. The account of the Voyage must be incom|pleat. Cook, not a circumstance of which has been omitted, he has added others, which though a little partaking of the mar|vellous, have yet their foundation in incon|trovertible truth.īut in this Preface, as it is not our in|tention to anticipate the pleasure the Reader will undoubtedly receive in the perusal of this small volume, we shall only just pre|mise, that it is not an abridgement, or an abstract, from the work published by au|thority but a distinct original work, au|thenticated by a comparison with that writ|ten by the Captains Cook and King, and agreeing with them in the essential points of discovery and containing many particulars unnoticed in their narrative, without which Our Voyager, however, has not been un|mindful of what the public had a right to expect, from Voyagers who had visited and re-visited every corner of the earth, and who had not been insensible to the charms of the young females, with whom they must have had so many opportunities to converse but, to all that has been related in the solid nar|rative of Capt.
The desertion of the petty officer and mate from the ships at Ulitea, with the vain hope of aspiring at principalities in Otaheite, and the unexpected meeting with the Russians at Oonalaska, we meet with nothing calculated either to excite pleasure or move pain, till the unfortunate death of Capt. Of the adventures of those who performed the Voyage, little is related in the work published by authority: and, if we except
It must astonish the world, if any thing can astonish the navigating world, that one year being lost, in which a third of the pro|visions for a three years Voyage, was con|sumed, as it were, in waste, without the possibility of supplying the chief articles of an English seaman's subsistence at sea (namely, beef, bread, flour, spirits, and tobacco) the Voyage could, notwithstanding, be protract|ed for four years, without a man suffering by hunger and but four men dying of any disease whatever. When in harbour, the manners, the cus|toms, the virtues and the vices, the arts and manufactures of the inhabitants of the dif|ferentĬountries their productions, animal and vegetable, seem to have been no less the objects of his enquiry.Īmidst other observations, even the errors committed in the progress of the Voyage, does not escape him nor does he fail to express his admiration of those wonderful powers, that, amidst innumerable difficulties into which some casual mistakes had involved the fate of both ships, could surmount every obstacle that stood in the way of accomplish|ing the first object of the Voyage insomuch, that before the last fatal miscarriage that de|prived the Commander in Chief of his life, the way was smoothed, and every thing put on such a footing, as to afford well-grounded hopes of a happy issue. At|tentive to every material transaction on board his own ship, he had been careful to inform himself of every thing that affected the Voy|age, on board the other.
MORNING JOURNAL LISBON CU PROFESSIONAL
Our Journalist appears to have been a man, who, to great professional skill, had added all the requisites of an instructive Voyager. THE EDITOR of this Voyage, which has already past through Three Edi|tions, with the approbation of those who were companions in the expedition, and sharers in the dangers of it, has still the farther satisfaction, on comparing the origi|nal journal with that now published by authority, to find the facts and dates, the latitudes and longitudes (those essentials of a Voyage undertaken for Discovery) so exactly to correspond, as could hardly have been ex|pected from journals kept on board the same ship by different observers, who had no com|munication with each other.-No greater proof is therefore necessary to establish its authenticity. ILLUSTRATED WITH CUTS, AND A CHART, SHEWING THE TRACKS OF THE SHIPS EMPLOYED IN THIS EXPEDITION.Ī NEW EDITION, COMPARED WITH, AND CORRECTED FROM, THE VOYAGE PUBLISHED BY AUTHORITY. JOURNAL OF CAPTAIN COOK's LAST VOYAGE, TO THE PACIFIC OCEAN, ON DISCOVERY: PERFORMED IN THE YEARS 1776, 1777, 1778, 1779, AND 1780.
0 kommentar(er)
