its publication, although vital strength was wanting to finish a
work so happily begun and so well designed. PREFACE THERE would
not, perhaps, be a more pleasant or profitable study, among those
which have their principal end in amusement, than that of travels
or voyages, if they were wrote as they might be and ought to be,
with a joint view to the entertainment and information of
mankind. If the conversation of travelers be so eagerly sought
after as it is, we may believe their books will be still more
agreeable company, as they will in general be more instructive
and more entertaining. But when I say the conversation of
travelers is usually so welcome, I must be understood to mean
that only of such as have had good sense enough to apply their
peregrinations to a proper use, so as to acquire from them a real
and valuable knowledge of men and things, both which are best
known by comparison. If the customs and manners of men were
everywhere the same, there would be no office so dull as that of
a traveler, for the difference of hills, valleys, rivers, in
short, the various views of which we may see the face of the
earth, would scarce afford him a pleasure worthy of his labor;
and surely it would give him very little opportunity of
communicating any kind of entertainment or improvement to others.

To make a traveler an agreeable companion to a man of sense, it
is necessary, not only that he should have seen much, but that he
should have overlooked much of what he hath seen. Nature is not,
any more than a great genius, always admirable in her
productions, and therefore the traveler, who may be called her
commentator, should not expect to find everywhere subjects worthy
of his notice. It is certain, indeed, that one may be guilty of
omission, as well as of the opposite extreme; but a fault on that