ON THE Ехе PRINTED FOR LONGMAN, HURST, REES, ORME, AND BROWN; AND SA 3638,11.12 Harvard College Library Wm. Cameron Forbes T. Davison, Lombard-street, PREFACE BY THE TRANSLATOR. It is observed by a popular French writer, Bernardin de St. Pierre, that by far the most valuable and entertaining part of modern literature is the department filled up by travellers. While the knowledge of the ancients extended merely to a small circle around them, and even there was far from accurate, there is hardly a nook in the most remote corner of the world of which we do not now possess some description, and with the inhabitants of which we are not more or less acquainted. We see the human race before us in every stage of civilization, from the refinement and enterprize of the inhabitants of the west of Europe, down to the |