ULLOa’s VOYAGE TO SOUTH AMERICA.

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any degree of certainty. But by the accident of thefe gentlemen going thither, with noother view than the improvement of knowledge, purfuing that view with the moll livelyzeal and affiduous application, and founding their reputation upon a plain and candidcommunication of all that knowledge which, with fo much pains and labour, they hadacquired, we have now as clear, concife, and corred a representation of thefe extenfiveregions as we can poffibly defire; fuch a one, as will anfwer all the ends of informationand inftrudion, enable us to difcover the errors and partialities in former accounts, andprevent our being amufed or milled by any erroneous relations for the future, which arecertainly circumftances of very great confequence.

The natural hiftory of thefe countries will be likewife found in the following Iheets, in amanner no lefs perfect and plealing. Thefe gentlemen went about it in a proper method,and with the talents requisite to the complete accomplilhment of their defign. Theyfaw things with their own eyes, they enquired carefully, but they took nothing on trull:on the contrary, they difcovered, and they have difclofed, many errors of an old Hand-ing ; exploded various common notions that were ill founded, and have left others inthe Hate in which they ought to be left, as things not thoroughly proved, or abfolutelydifproved; but which are referved for further examination. It is chiefly from the na-tural hiftory that we colled the value and importance of any country, becaufe fromthence we learn its produce of every kind. In thefe Iheets we find the greateft caretaken in this particular ; all the riches of the mineral, vegetable, and animal kingdomsexhibited to our view, their places exadly afiigned, their refpedive natures defcribed,the methods of ufing, improving, and manufaduring them pointed out; and, exclufiveof a multitude of vulgar errors expofed, and miftaken notions refuted, an infinity ofnew, curious, and important remarks are made, all tending to explain and illuftrate therefpedive fubjeds. Of thefe many inftances might be given; but that would be toanticipate the reader’s pleafure, and arrogate to ourfelves the merits of the authors wecelebrate.

In refped to the civil hiftory, the world in general was yet more in the dark than asto the natural; knowing much lefs of the inhabitants than of the commodities of thefecountries ; and in this refped our authors have been as candid, as circumftantial, andas copious, as in the other. They not only acquaint us with the diftribution and difpo-fition of the Spanilh governments ; with the nature, extent, and fubordination of thofewho prefide in them; but have alfo given us a regular plan of their adminiftration, andof the order and method in which juftice is difpenfed, and the civil policy maintained ;the domeftic ceconomy of the Spaniards, their cuftoms, manner of living, their wayof treating the Indians, both fubjeds and favages, are ftated with the fame freedom andprecifion. In like manner they give us a fuccind account of the Creoles , that is, fuchas are defcended from the Spaniards, and have been longer or later fettled in the Indies,with whatever is peculiar in refped to the genius, humour, virtues, and vices of thefepeople 5 and more efpecially the points in which they differ from the native Spaniards.The ftate and condition of the Indians who live in fubjedion to the Spaniards, theirtempers, employments, good and ill qualities, labours, and diverfions. The habitationsof the free Indians, their cuftoms, drefs, manner of fpending their lives, exercifes,talents, religion, and method of preferving the remembrance of paft tranfadions, asalfo the condition of the negroes and mulattoes, whether in the capacity of flaves,domeftic fervants, or in poffeflion of their freedom, with whatever differences occurin the ftate of any of thefe people in. different provinces..

But to the Englifh reader, perhaps, nothing in the following pages will be more ac-ceptable, as indeed nothing feems to have been more carefully confidered by the authors

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