A Voyage to Cochinchina, in the Years 1792 and 1793 —— To Which Is Annexed an Account of a Journey Made in the Years 1801 and 1802, to the Residence of the Chief of the Booshuana Nation

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ISBN: 9781332210299 出版年：2016 页码：516 John Barrow Forgotten Books

The Voyage which is here presented to the public has no pretensions to new discoveries, and can boast but little of its collection of new and important facts. It will conduct the reader precisely over the same ground which a much abler writer has previously occupied in The Authentic Account of an Embassy to China; and in whose hands were placed, in fact, a great part of the materials of which it is composed. The expectation, therefore, of new discoveries and extraordinary occurrences, which in books of voyages and travels is alone sufficient to keep the attention constantly on the stretch, should only be indulged to a moderate degree in the perusal of the present work. Yet although the ground may already have been trodden, the range is so extensive, the prospects so various, and the objects so numerous, that new scenes are not difficult to be exhibited, nor those before observed to be sketched in different positions, as seen from different points of view. The lapse of ten or twelve years, having materially changed the aspect of the political horizon in every part of the world, has also given scope for new suggestions and reflections which could not exist when the voyage was made, but which are particularly applicable to the present time. Besides, every foreign country, though it may have been visited by fifty different voyagers, will still present something new for the observation of the fifty-first.