A General History and Collection of Voyages and Travels — Volume 09: Arranged in Systematic Order: Forming a Complete History of the Origin and Progress of Navigation, Discovery, and Commerce, by Sea and Land, from the Earliest Ages to the Present TimeKerr, Robert
History
A General History and Collection of Voyages and Travels — Volume 09: Arranged in Systematic Order: Forming a Complete History of the Origin and Progress of Navigation, Discovery, and Commerce, by Sea and Land, from the Earliest Ages to the Present Time
Kerr, Robert
Voyages and travels
There are two editions of this journal in our older Collections of
Voyages and Travels, but both exceeding defective and imperfect. The
_first_ of these is in the Pilgrims of Purchas, which is said to have
been "_Collected out_ of the Journal of Sir Thomas Roe, Knight, Lord
Ambassador from his Majesty of Great Britain, to the Great Mogul." It is
evidently to be considered as an _abridgement_ made by Purchas, which,
indeed, he fully acknowledges in a postscript, in the following
terms:--"Some readers may perhaps wish they had the whole journal, and
not thus contracted into _extracts_ of those things out of it which I
conceived more fit for the public. And for the whole, myself would have
wished it; but neither with the honourable Company, nor elsewhere, could
I learn of it, the worthy knight himself being now employed in like
honourable embassage from his majesty to the _Great Turk_." Besides that
it is a mere abridgement, often most confusedly, and almost
unintelligibly tacked together, this article in The Pilgrims breaks off
abruptly in a most interesting part of the narrative, which we have now
no means to supply. The full title of this article in The Pilgrims is as
follows:--"Observations collected out of the Journal of Sir Thomas Roe,
Knight, Lord Ambassador from his Majesty the King of Great Britain, to
the Great Mogul. Consisting of Occurrences worthy of Memory, in the way,
and at the Court of the Mogul; together with an Account of his Customs,
Cities, Countries, Subjects, and other Circumstances relating to India."
[Footnote 183: Purch. Pilgr. I. 535. Churchill's Collect. I. 617.]
The _other_ edition of this journal is in the collection published by
the Churchills, of which we quote from the third edition of 1744,
reprinted by Lintot and Osburn, booksellers in London. Of this edition
the editor of that collection gives the following account:--"Sir Thomas
Roe has before appeared in print, in part at least, in the collection of
Purchas, since translated into French, and published in the first volume
of the collection by Thevenot. He now comes again abroad with
considerable additions, not foisted in, but taken from his own original
manuscript, of which it would appear that Purchas only had an imperfect
copy. These additions, it is true, are not great in bulk, but they are
valuable for the subject; and several matters, which in the other
collection are brought in abruptly, are here continued in a more
methodical manner."
Public-domain text, read in full here on John Shaqi.
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