of crews, with the conduct of seamen on shore and in port, and with the duties of owners and masters, which I am confident are deserving of the notice, recollection, and attention of persons employed in these departments of life. It was also thought expedient to introduce such information concerning the places which I visited, as might render the book interesting and instructive to landsmen, and as should give me an opportunity to offer my sentiments, as they occured, upon various topics in morals, condition, and char

acter.

In undertaking this work, I was aware of the difficulties which I should have to encounter, in consequence of my want of an early and academic education, although I have always seized every possible opportunity during my whole life- for the improvement of my mind in the knowledge of useful literature and those sciences that are immediately connected with the pursuits to which I have been professionally devoted. My efforts have not been without success; and I have been often employed in giving instructions to midshipmen, other subordinate officers, and seamen, in mathematics, astronomy, and navigation.— These difficulties therefore were not greater in regard to me than they have been in regard to many other voyagers and travellers, who have very proper ly and usefully employed their pens in writing accounts of their observations and discoveries for the

public. I wished this narrative to have my own char acter, sentiments, and manner, subject only to such a revision by some of my friends, before the manuscript went to press, as would free it from any gross errors in grammar, and peculiar obscurity in the construction of the sentences. I know that the book is unequally written, that the order is not always as happy as it might have been, that the facts and observations are miscellaneously presented to the reader, and that sometimes those belonging to the same subject are separated from each other at too great a distance. The nature of the narrative is such as to render it of necessity miscellaneous in a high degree, but the considerable defects in point of arrangement have arisen, not merely from my inexperience in the business of book-making, but from the fact that the press was set to work before my manuscript was revised, the sheets were printed as fast as they were prepared, and information sometimes came in, after its proper place was occupied with other matter. I do not attempt to justify this; I only desire to record my most sincere regret for the existence of those circumstances which have compelled me to carry my book through the press in this manner.

My manuscript was very nearly completed for the whole work before it was offered to any one for correction. It has undergone no alteration in respect to the facts, the general arrangement, the matter introduced, or the spirit and tenor of the sentiments and

reflections. Although I am but little qualified to appear before the public in this way, yet the responsibility of every thing in the book, where credit is not given, is entirely my own. A number of my friends have been successively employed to revise the different parts of the manuscript, and in consequence of this, the style is in a degree varied according to the several hands. In the first part o my narrative, that which is included in the period when I was with McClure, the reflections are the most numerous, as I made them the most frequently myself in the narrative, and the thoughts were considerably filled out in the Correction of the sheets for the press.

The names are spelled differently in different books. The orthography in this work is supported in every instance by some printed authority. The three plates I have procured in addition to the original design, without any addition to the terms and expense contemplated in the prospectus. The whole is written with a spirit of independence, without wounding the feelings, as I trust, of any good man. Perhaps my remarks may sometimes appear to pay too little deference to popular prejudice. I hope however, that what I have always felt may always appear in my expressions, and that is a uniform respect and attachment to all the good and generous qualities of our nature, and an unaffected veneration for the laws of Providence and the principles of true religion.

It may be considered by some of my readers that I have been at times too minute in giving details in this narrative concerning officers and crews, the manner in which they were treated, and the attention paid to their effects after their death, But notices of this kind are valuable to the cause of morality and humanity, and will help, I trust, to stimulate others to do the same things for their fellow men which are recommended here. What I have neglected myself, and what I have seen deficient in other commanders of vessels, have led me to make such remarks in the course of this work as I thought would be useful to the community, and particularly to those who are called upon, not only for acts of justice, but for those of disinterestedness, at sea.

It will be observed that the table of contents is made out very full in order to answer in some measure the purpose of an iudex.

NARRATIVE

OF

VOYAGES AND TRAVELS.

CHAPTER I.

The Ship Massachusetts-Shaw-Hayden-Hackett-Briggs-The object of the Voyaye of the Massachusetts-Her Crew-Passage to China-arrival at Batavia-at Canton-Occurrences there.

THE voyage, with which I shall commence my narrative, was

made in the ship Massachusetts. She was built at Quincy in one of the branches of Boston harbour, and was launched in September, 1789, An agreement was made at Canton in China, with major Samuel Shaw, a Bostonian, to build the Massachusetts for the firm of Shaw & Randall, both of whom had been officers in the American army during the revolution, and had travelled to India after the peace of 1783, when the army was disbanded. Of Randal I know but little. Shaw was aid de camp to general Knox, who commanded the artillery during the whole war, and who often told me that Shaw enjoyed the full approbation and confidence of all his superior officers. He was a man of fine talents and considerable cultivation; he placed so high a value upon the sentiments of honour that some of his friends thought it was carried to excess, and said it would do him no good. He was candid, just, and generous, faithful in his friendships, an agreeable companion, and manly in all his intercourse. He died with a complaint of the liver, on a voyage from Canton to America, a succeeding voyage to that in which I was with him. He was buried in the ocean off the Cape of Good Hope.

The contractor with Major Shaw for the building of the ship was Eli Hayden of Braintree, a man of abilities in his profession,