Читать книгу Voyage In Search Of La Perouse Volume I - Jacques Labillardiere - Страница 3

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THE laudable taste for Voyages and Travels, which prevails in the present age, has been gratified with many excellent productions, which render that species of literature highly interesting to readers of almost every description. Modern voyages of discovery have embraced so Many objects, that in them the Navigator sees the progress of his important art, the Geographer observes the improvement of his kindred science, the Naturalist is gratified with curious and useful objects of research, the Merchant discovers new scenes of commercial enterprise, and the General Reader finds, a fund of rational entertainment.

The Moral Philosopher, too; who loves to trace the advances of his species through its various gradations from savage to civilized life, draws from voyages and travels, the facts from which he is to deduce his conclusions respecting the social, intellectual, and moral progress of Man. He sees savage life every where diversified with a variety, which, if he reason fairly, must lead him to conclude, that what is called the state of nature, is, in truth, the state of a rational being placed in various physical circumstances, which have contracted or expanded his faculties in various degrees; but that"men always appear

"among animals a distinct and a superior race;

"that neither the possession of similar organs,

"nor the use of the hand, which nature has

"given to some species of apes, nor the continued

"intercourse with this sovereign artist, have

"enabled any other species to blend their nature

"with his; that in his rudest state he is found

"to be above them, and in his greatest degeneracy

"never descends to their level; that he is,

"in short, a man in every condition; and that "we can learn nothing of his nature from the "analogy of other animals."*Every where adapting means to ends, and variously altering and combining those means, according to his views and wants, Man, even when pursuing the gratification of animal instincts, too often miserably depraved, shows himself to be possessed of nobler faculties, of liberty to chuse among different objects and expedients, and of reason to direct him in that choice. There is sufficient variety in human actions to show that, though Man acts from motives, he acts not mechanically, but freely; yet sufficient similarity of conduct, in similar circumstances, to prove the unity of his nature. Hence there appears no ground whatever for supposing, that any one tribe of mankind is naturally of an order superior to the rest, or has any shadow of right to infringe, far less to abrogate, the common claims of humanity. Philosophers should not forget, and the most respectable modern philosophers have not forgotten, that the savage state of the most civilized nations now in Europe, is a subject within the pale of authentic history, and that the privation of iron alone, would soon reduce them nearly to the barbarous state, from which, by a train of favourable events, their forefathers emerged same centuries ago. If the limits of a preface would allow us to pursue the reflections suggested by the different views of savage life, presented by this and various other scientific voyages, it would be easy to show, that the boasted refinement of Europe entirely depends on a few happy discoveries, which are become so familiar to us, that we are apt to suppose the inhabitants of these parts of the world to have been always possessed of them; discoveries so unaccountable, and so remote from any experiments which uncivilized tribes can be supposed to have made, that we cannot do better than acknowledge them among the many precious gifts of an indulgent Providence.

[* Ferguson on Civil Society.]

Having mentioned Providence, a word not very common in some of our modern voyages, we are tempted to add a consideration which has often occurred to our minds, in contemplating the probable issue of that zeal for discovering and corresponding with distant regions, which has long animated the maritime powers of Europe. Without obtruding our own sentiments on the reader, we may be permitted to ask, whether appearances do not justify a conjecture, that the Great Arbiter of the destinies of nations may render that zeal subservient to the moral and intellectual, not to say the religious, improvement, and the consequent happiness, of our whole species? or, Whether, as has hitherto generally happened, the advantages of civilization may not, in the progress of events, be transferred from the Europeans, who have but too little prized them, to those remote countries which they have been so diligently exploring? If so, the period may arrive, when New Zealand may produce her Lockes, her Newtons, and her Montesquieus; and and when great nations in the immense region of New Holland, may send their navigators, philosophers, and antiquaries, to contemplate the ruins of ancient London and Paris, and to trace the languid remains of the arts and sciences in this quarter of the globe. Who can tell, whether the rudiments of some great suture empire may not already exist at Botany Bay?

But, not to detain the reader with such general reflections, which, however, open interesting views to contemplative minds, we proceed to say a few words of the work now presented to the Public. And here we need to do little more than refer to the learned and ingenious Author's introduction to his own work. The reader will immediately perceive that, if it has been tolerably executed, it must form a valuable Supplement to the Voyage* of the unfortunate La Pérouse so valuable indeed, that it may fairly be questioned, whether that work can be considered as perfect without it.

[* Printed for Stockdale, London, in two large vols. 8vo. with fifty-one fine Plates. It must be observed, that this is the only edition to which are annexed the interesting Travels of De Lesseps, over the Continent, from Kamtschatka, with Pérouse's dispatches.]

Of the execution of the work, the reader must form his own judgment. He will perhaps agree with us, that the Author writes with the modesty and perspicuity which become a philosopher, who all along recollects that he is composing a narrative, and not a declamation. He has, in our opinion, with, great taste and judgment, generally abstained from those rhetorical flourishes, which give an air of bombast to too many of the works of his countrymen, even when treating of subjects which demand accuracy rather than ornament. Most of his reflections are pertinent and just, and not so far pursued as to deprive the reader of an opportunity of exercising his ingenuity by extending them farther.

This chaste and unaffected manner of writing may be considered as an internal mark of the fidelity of his narrative. He had no weak or deformed parts to conceal with flowery verbiage, and therefore he rejected its meretricious aid. As another, and a fill stronger proof of our Author's fidelity, we may mention his occasional censure of the conduct of Officers, not excepting the Commander in Chief himself, when their conduct happened not to appear quite deserving of that general approbation, which he seems willing to bestow. A man must be very conscious of having honestly executed his own mission, and of faithfully describing the objects of it, when he scruple not to express publicly his disapprobation of the conduct of Officers of talents and distinction, engaged in the higher departments of the same great undertaking.

In translating the work, the object aimed at was to render it so literally as never to depart from the meaning of the Author; yet so freely as not merely to clothe his French idiom with English words. The translation of such a work should, in our opinion, be free without licence, and literal without servility.

Some readers would, no doubt, have willingly dispensed with a great number of the nautical remarks, and with all the bearings and distances; but those particulars were plainly so important to navigators, that they could not, on any account, be omitted. Nor, indeed, has a single sentence of the original, been retrenched in the translation, except two passages, which would have been justly considered as indelicate by most English readers; and, for the same reason, the two engravings referred to in the exceptionable passages, have been altered.

The whole of the plates are given in a style generally not inferior to the original, which, with the French work in quarto, are sold for six guineas, being thrice the price of the present translation.

*** In the original, the distances are all expressed in the new French denominations of metres, decametres, &c. and the Author has given a table for reducing them to toises. But, in the translation, the reader has been spared that trouble, by every where inserting the equivalent toises, French fathoms. A toise is equal to six French feet, or nearly to six feet five inches, English measure; 2,853 toises make a geographical or nautical league, twenty of which make a degree of a great circle of the earth. Hence, to reduce toises to nautical leagues, divide them by 2,853; the quotient will be the leagues, and the remainder the odd toises.