Lastly I know there are some who are apt to slight my accounts and descriptions of things as if it was an easy matter and of little or no difficulty to do all that I have done, to visit little more than the coasts of unknown countries, and make short and imperfect observations of things only near the shore.  But whoever is experienced in these matters, or considers things impartially, will be of a very different opinion.  And anyone who is sensible how backward and refractory the seamen are apt to be in long voyages when they know not whither they are going, how ignorant they are of the nature of the winds and the shifting seasons of the monsoons, and how little even the officers themselves generally are skilled in the variation of the needle and the use of the azimuth compass; besides the hazard of all outward accidents in strange and unknown seas:  anyone, I say, who is sensible of these difficulties will be much more pleased at the discoveries and observations I have been able to make than displeased with me that I did not make more.

Thus much I thought necessary to premise in my own vindication against the objections that have been made to my former performances.  But not to trouble the reader any further with matters of this nature; what I have more to offer shall be only in relation to the following voyage.

For the better apprehending the course of this voyage and the situation of the places mentioned in it I have here, as in the former volumes, caused a map to be engraven with a pricked line representing to the eye the whole thread of the voyage at one view, besides charts and figures of particular places, to make the descriptions I have given of them more intelligible and useful.

Moreover, which I had not opportunity of doing in my former voyages; having now had in the ship with me a person skilled in drawing, I have by this means been enabled, for the greater satisfaction of the curious reader, to present him with exact cuts and figures of several of the principal and most remarkable of those birds, beasts, fishes and plants, which are described in the following narrative; and also of several which, not being able to give any better or so good an account of, as by causing them to be exactly engraven, the reader will not find any further description of them, but only that they were found in such or such particular countries.  The plants themselves are in the hands of the ingenious Dr. Woodward.  I could have caused many others to be drawn in like manner but that I resolved to confine myself to such only as had some very remarkable difference in the shape of their principal parts from any that are found in Europe.  I have besides several birds and fishes ready drawn, which I could not put into the present volume because they were found in countries to the description whereof the following narrative does not reach.  For, being obliged to prepare for another voyage sooner than I at first expected, I have not been able to continue the ensuing narrative any further than to my departure from the coast of New Holland.  But if it please God that I return again safe, the reader may expect a continuation of this voyage from my departure from New Holland till the foundering of my ship near the island of Ascension.