The accounts here given of the British colonies are very brief. They seem to have been chiefly intended to form an introduction to the Major's description of our late conquests in that part of the world; and which must, undoubtedly, be considered as the most valuable part of his work. Accordingly he himself observes, that 'it will not be expected, after volumes on volumes that have been published concerning the British colonies on the eastern shore of the American continent, that any thing materially _new_ can be related of them.' The only thing, adds he, 'that I mean to attempt with regard to this is, to collect such facts and circumstances, as in a political and commercial view, appear to me to be most interesting; to reduce them to an easy and familiar method, and contract them within such narrow limits, that the whole may be seen as it were at once, and every thing material be collected from a few pages, concerning seventeen provinces; a minute and circumstantial account of which would fill so many considerable volumes. 'In doing this, where my own knowlege (acquired by travelling several times through most of them) did not serve me, I have endeavoured to make use of the most authentic materials, collected from others, and to set every fact and circumstance in a true and impartial light, without favour or prejudice to any particular part or party. 'But the principal object I have had in view, and what I look upon to be the most interesting and deserving part of this work, is the account I have given of the interior parts of North America, which though concise, and vastly short of what I should be glad to exhibit, I flatter myself is as full and perfect as any at present to be come at. Certain I am, that no one man besides has traveled over and seen so much of this part of the country as I have done; and if my remarks and observations relative thereto are injudicious or wrongly placed, it is not owing to any want of attention to the subject, but merely to a want of skill. What is comprehended under the appellation of the _interior_ country of America, is of itself a larger territory than all the continent of Europe, and is at present mostly a desart, uninhabited, except by savages: it cannot therefore be reasonably expected that any one man has it in his power to give a just and minute account of its several parts, but that he must pass over large tracts of country in very general terms, and in many things depend upon the reports of others, or proceed upon his own uncertain conjectures.