WANDERINGS IN SOUTH AMERICA

By CHARLES WATERTON







PREFACE TO THE FIRST EDITION


I offer this book of "Wanderings" with a hesitating hand. It has little
merit, and must make its way through the world as well as it can. It will
receive many a jostle as it goes along, and perhaps is destined to add one
more to the number of slain in the field of modern criticism. But if it
fall, it may still, in death, be useful to me; for should some accidental
rover take it up and, in turning over its pages, imbibe the idea of going
out to explore Guiana in order to give the world an enlarged description of
that noble country, I shall say, "fortem ad fortia misi," and demand the
armour; that is, I shall lay claim to a certain portion of the honours he
will receive, upon the plea that I was the first mover of his discoveries;
for, as Ulysses sent Achilles to Troy, so I sent him to Guiana. I intended
to have written much more at length; but days and months and years have
passed away, and nothing has been done. Thinking it very probable that I
shall never have patience enough to sit down and write a full account of
all I saw and examined in those remote wilds, I give up the intention of
doing so, and send forth this account of my "Wanderings" just as it was
written at the time.