their performance; yet this delay in their publication may, on some considerations, enhance their value. It may be interesting to the young merchant to trace some of the great revolutions in the commerce of the world, which have occurred within the above-named periods; and those of advanced age may be induced to recur to by-gone days, with pleasing, even if accompanied with melancholy associations.

For several years preceding the date of the first of my voyages, the merchants of the United States, and particularly those of Salem, carried on an active and lucrative commerce with the Isles of France and Bourbon, which was continued up to the period of the conquest of those islands by the British, since which it has nearly ceased. That important product of our country, cotton, which is now its greatest and most valuable article of export, employing a greater amount of tonnage than any other, was then unknown as an article of export from the United States; and the little required for the consumption of our domestic fabrics, was imported from Demerara, Surinam, and the West India Islands. The trade to the Northwest Coast of America, which for about twenty-five years was actively and almost exclusively pursued from Boston, on an extensive scale, and to great advantage, has for some years been abandoned, from the scarcity and high price of furs, caused by the competition of the Russians, who have gradually advanced their posts far to the south of those places where my cargo was collected; and where they were not then seen. The sealing voy

PREFACE.

ages, which were prosecuted most actively from New Haven, Norwich, and Stonington, principally to the Island of Masafuera, and by which sudden and large fortunes were made, have, for many years past, been productive of little comparative advantage to the few yet engaged in them; and this in consequence of the animal's being almost annihilated.

Our cargoes from China, which were formerly paid for in these furs, and in Spanish dollars, are now procured for bills on England, for opium, and for European and American fabrics. The cotton and silk manufactures of Indostan, constituted formerly, almost exclusively, the cargoes of our ships from Calcutta, which were paid for in Spanish dollars, and which generally yielded large profits. At this time our cotton fabrics are so much better and cheaper, as entirely to have superseded the importation of those; and most of the articles which now compose a cargo from Calcutta, excepting saltpetre and bandanas, were then scarcely known there, as articles of export to this country. Bills on England in payment for these cargoes, as well as for those laden at other ports of India, have been substituted for Spanish dollars, which formerly were indispensable to the prosecution of this trade.

When I first visited the ports of Brazil, of Chili, of Peru, of Mexico, and of California, they had been for ages, and were then, so exclusively used for their own respective flags, that the admittance of one of a foreign nation, was granted only on the most palpable evidence of a necessity, which it would be a*

inhuman not to relieve. When admitted, no individual belonging to the vessel was permitted to land, or to walk the streets of the city, without the disagreeable incumbrance of a soldier following him; hence the difficulty of obtaining information, and consequently the meagre accounts given of the manners and customs of those nations.

The revolutions in those countries which have been effected with so much individual distress, and so great loss of life, though far from having produced the prosperity and happiness anticipated by their most enlightened patriots, have nevertheless caused their ports to be thrown open for the admission of the flags of all nations. This has afforded opportunities to strangers for visiting them, which have been abundantly improved; and the numerous and elaborate accounts of them which have been given to the world, within a few years, by literary men, who possessed the requisite leisure and opportunity for the purpose, seemed to obviate the necessity of my attempting to enlarge on those subjects. The same reason forbade the attempt at more than cursory and passing descriptions of countries, cities, customs, and manners in other parts of the globe, visited by me for objects exclusively of a commercial character.

Equally, if not even more remarkable than the changes above mentioned, are those observable at the Sandwich Islands, since my first visit there in the year 1799. Then the inhabitants were but little elevated from the barbarous state in which they were found by Captain Cook; —now they are com

paratively a civilized people, sensible of the value of instruction, and eager to obtain it; cultivating their fields, and, by an extended and increasing foreign trade, affording a most remarkable instance of the ameliorating and humanizing effects of com

merce.

In these days of philanthropy, when there are so many zealous advocates and active promoters of the great and truly benevolent cause of temperance, it is proper and becoming in every well wisher to the advancement of this cause, to aid it in every way in his power. With such impressions, and with the favorable opportunity now presented, I should consider it reprehensible to withhold from the public, a statement of facts relating to myself personally, and which no other consideration than the hope of doing good, would induce me to make, although they may be viewed by many as not the least extraordinary of the facts which have been narrated.

I am not, nor have I ever been a member of a temperance society; but I was a practical temperance man long before such societies were dreamed of. At the period when I began my nautical career, it was a universally received maxim, that drinking grog and chewing tobacco were two essential and indispensable requisites for making a good seaman. So omnipotent is custom, and so powerful is satire, that although the absurdity of such a maxim must be apparent to every one, I have, nevertheless, seen many young men repeatedly made sick before overcoming the disgust, and some of them afterwards became miserable drunkards. As alcohol and tobac

co were in no degree less offensive to me than I had evidence of their being to my associates, it appeared to me that to submit to the ridicule rather than to the sickness, was selecting the least of the evils, and I acted accordingly.

Those who may honor me with a perusal of my narrative will perceive, that I have navigated to all parts of the world, from the sixtieth degree of south latitude, to the sixtieth degree north; and sometimes in vessels whose diminutive size and small number of men caused exposure to wet and cold, greatly surpassing what is usually experienced in ships of ordinary capacity; that I have been exposed to the influence of the most unhealthy places; at Batavia, where I have seen whole crews prostrate with the fever, and death making havoc among them; at San Blas, where the natives can stay only a portion of the year; at the Havana, within whose walls I have resided five years consecutively; that I have suffered captivity, robbery, imprisonment, ruin, and the racking anxiety consequent thereon. And yet, through the whole, and to the present sixty-eighth year of my age, I have never taken a drop of spirituous liquor of any kind; never a glass of wine, of porter, ale, or beer, or any beverage stronger than tea and coffee; and, moreover, I have never used tobacco in any way whatever; and this, not only without injury, but, on the contrary, to the preservation of my health. Headache is known to me by name only; and excepting those fevers, which were produced by great anxiety and excitement, my life has been free from sickness.