When to these we
add, the coppering of ships, which was first practised about the year 1761,
and other improvements in their built and rigging, we have enumerated the
chief causes which enable a vessel to reach the East Indies in two-thirds
of the time which was occupied in such a voyage half a century ago.
Nor must we forget that the health of the seamen has, during the same
period, been rendered infinitely more secure; so that mortality and
sickness, in the longest voyages, and under great and frequent changes of
climate, and other circumstances usually affecting health, will not exceed
what would have occurred on land during the same time.
The great advantages which the very improved state of all branches of
physical science, and of natural history, bestow on travellers in modern
times, are enjoyed, though not in an equal degree, by navigators and by
those who journey on land. To the latter they are indeed most important,
and will principally account for the superiority of modern travels over
those which were published a century ago, or even fifty years since. It is
plain that our knowledge of foreign countries relates either to animate or
inanimate nature: to the soil and geology, the face of the surface, and
what lies below it; the rivers, lakes, mountains, climate, and the plants;
or to the natural history, strictly so called:--and to the manners,
institutions, government, religion, and statistics of the inhabitants.
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