As many of the inhabitants of the eastern world will find themselves
little interested in the trifling transactions and events here related,
such readers will easily discover in what latitude the author wrote, and
for whose use his work was principally intended. They will also soon
perceive, that this history, like that of Dr. DOUGLAS respecting a
northern settlement in America, is only a rough draught, and far from
being a finished piece; and the author will frankly and candidly
acknowledge it. The case with respect to him is this, to which he must
beg the reader's attention. Having been several years a resident at
Charlestown in South Carolina, he was at some pains to pick up such
original papers and detached manuscripts as he could find, containing
accounts of the past transactions of that colony. This he did at first
for the sake of private amusement; but after having collected a
considerable number of those papers, he resolved to devote such hours as
could be spared from more serious and important business, to arrange
them, and form a kind of historical account of the rise and progress of
that settlement. For the illustration of particular periods, he confesses
that he was sometimes obliged to have recourse to very confused
materials, and to make use of such glimmering lights as occurred; indeed
his means of information, in the peculiar circumstances in which he
stood, were often not so good as he could have desired, and even from
these he was excluded before he had finished the collection necessary to
complete his plan. Besides, while he was employed in arranging these
materials, being in a town agitated with popular tumults, military
parade, and frequent alarms, his situation was very unfavourable for calm
study and recollection.

While the reader attends to these things, and at the same time considers
that the author has entered on a new field, where, like the wilderness he