The Project Gutenberg EBook of Robert Kerr's General History and
Collection of Voyages and Travels, Volume 18, by William Stevenson

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Title: Robert Kerr's General History and Collection of Voyages and Travels, Volume 18
Historical Sketch of the Progress of Discovery, Navigation, and
Commerce, from the Earliest Records to the Beginning of the Nineteenth
Century, By William Stevenson

Author: William Stevenson

Release Date: October 5, 2004 [EBook #13606]

Language: English

Character set encoding: ASCII

*** START OF THIS PROJECT GUTENBERG EBOOK KERR'S VOYAGES ***

Produced by Robert Connal and the Online Distributed Proofreading
Team, from images generously made available by the Canadian Institute
for Historical Microreproductions.

A GENERAL HISTORY AND COLLECTION OF VOYAGES AND TRAVELS,

ARRANGED IN SYSTEMATIC ORDER:

FORMING A COMPLETE HISTORY OF THE ORIGIN AND PROGRESS OF NAVIGATION,
DISCOVERY, AND COMMERCE, BY SEA AND LAND, FROM THE EARLIEST AGES TO THE
PRESENT TIME.

BY

ROBERT KERR, F.R.S. & F.A.S. EDIN.

ILLUSTRATED BY MAPS AND CHARTS.

VOL. XVIII.

WILLIAM BLACKWOOD, EDINBURGH:

AND T. CADELL, LONDON.

MDCCCXXIV.

HISTORICAL SKETCH OF THE PROGRESS OF DISCOVERY, NAVIGATION, AND COMMERCE,
FROM THE EARLIEST RECORDS TO THE BEGINNING OF THE NINETEENTH CENTURY.

BY WILLIAM STEVENSON, ESQ.

WILLIAM BLACKWOOD, EDINBURGH:

AND T. CADELL; LONDON.

MDCCCXXIV.

Printed by A. & B. Spottiswoode,
New-Street-Square.

[Transcriber's Note: The errata listed after the Table of Contents are
marked in the text thus: [has->have]]

PREFACE.

The curiosity of that man must be very feeble and sluggish, and his
appetite for information very weak or depraved, who, when he compares the
map of the world, as it was known to the ancients, with the map of the
world as it is at present known, does not feel himself powerfully excited
to inquire into the causes which have progressively brought almost every
speck of its surface completely within our knowledge and access. To develop
and explain these causes is one of the objects of the present work; but
this object cannot be attained, without pointing