others in future voyages; and likewise to such readers at home as are
more desirous of a plain and just account of the true nature and state of
the things described than of a polite and rhetorical narrative: I hope
all the defects in my style will meet with an easy and ready pardon.

Others have taxed me with borrowing from other men's journals; and with
insufficiency, as if I was not myself the author of what I write but
published things digested and drawn up by others. As to the first part of
this objection I assure the reader I have taken nothing from any man
without mentioning his name, except some very few relations and
particular observations received from credible persons who desired not to
be named; and these I have always expressly distinguished in my books
from what I relate as of my own observing. And as to the latter I think
it so far from being a diminution to one of my education and employment
to have what I write revised and corrected by friends that, on the
contrary, the best and most eminent authors are not ashamed to own the
same thing, and look upon it as an advantage.

Lastly I know there are some who are apt to slight my accounts and
descriptions of things as if it was an easy matter and of little or no
difficulty to do all that I have done, to visit little more 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