preferred to gather about him the logs and journals written by the men who saw and did the things they related in them, records penned on the spot and at the moment, when events made their strongest and truest impression on the minds of the writers. In this he followed the time-honoured practice of the early historians extolled by good old Isidore of Seville, 'Apud veteres enim nemo scribebat Historiam, nisi is qui interfuisset et ea quæ scribenda essent vidisset.' And this is the principle obeyed by the Council of the Hakluyt Society to-day.

Founded in 1846 by a coterie of literary, scientific, and antiquarian scholars, the Society has for its object the printing and circulation of unpublished or out-of-print and rare original accounts of voyages, travels, naval expeditions, and other geographical explorations not readily accessible to readers. Documents of this class are of special interest and utility to students of history, geography, navigation, and ethnology. Many of them, particularly the original narratives and translations by writers of the Elizabethan and Stewart periods, afford admirable examples of English prose at the stage of its most robust development. Of such a character are the Journal of John Jourdain' and the 'Travels of Peter Mundy.'* A few years later Thomas Bowrey's graphic and neatly illustrated account of the Countries round the Bay of Bengal' takes up the running and is closely followed by Fryer's New Account of East India and Persia,' the author's travels extending over nine years, from 1672 to 1681.

John Fryer was a very observant person and had received a good education, having graduated as a bachelor of medicine in 1671, per literas regias, at Cambridge. Being presently 'enterteyned as Chirurgeon for Bombay, to doe in that profession as they shall find him deserving' in the employ of the East India Company, he set out at the close of the same year to enter upon his professional career in the Orient, where he was to receive a stipend of '50s. per mensem, to commence at his arriveall saving clause which proved the means of deferring

Published by the Society in 1905 and later years.

-a

Fryer's enjoyment of this munificent reward for exactly one year. Six months of this period were occupied in the voyage from the Downs to Masulipatam; the second half-year elapsed, owing to various detentions, before he found his way thence to Bombay, which had then just become a British possession, acquired from the Crown of Portugal.

After describing the common incidents of life at sea in those days, a call at Porto Praya,* and a highly interesting visit to Johanna, in which island, he tells us, 'all things strive to gratify the Life of Man,' Fryer goes on to relate his adventures, observations, and reflexions, in the form of eight long Letters. They are addressed to some person of quality whose name is not revealed, but who had done Fryer the honour to see him off on the day he embarked 'at Graves' End,' and had then exacted from him a promise, says the author, whereby you obliged me to give you an account not only of my Being, but of what Occurrences were worth my Animadversion.' This undertaking Fryer faithfully fulfilled, his letters extending, when printed, to three goodly octavo volumes as issued by the Hakluyt Society.

Mr Crooke, having also prepared the new edition of 'Hobson-Jobson' for press, found the editing of Fryer's letters a congenial task, many of the AngloIndian terms explained in that medley being quoted by its original compilers from the 1698 edition of Fryer. In fact, Sir Henry Yule himself, alluding to HobsonJobson,' wrote that no work has been more serviceable in the compilation of the glossary'; and one has only to glance through its pages to see that Fryer's narrative, and the constant 'animadversion' with which he enriched his statements, render the book a veritable treasurehouse of Indian and Persian social history, and a prolific source of references or quotations for the student of Eastern topics.

From Bombay Fryer was transferred (September 1674) to Surat, where he remained six months. Returning to Bombay, he next visited the Junnar Fort, and

The present writer, visiting Porto Praya two hundred years later, met with exactly the same incidents and experiences as Fryer relates, even to the price demanded (an old coat) for a monkey.

afterwards went on to Goa and other places, and back to Surat. In 1676 his stipend was increased to 3 li.' a month, and he was despatched into Persia, travelling by sea as far as Bandar Abbas and thence by the caravan route through Shiraz to Ispahan, visiting the ruins of Persepolis by the way. While in Persia his health broke down; and in January 1678/9 he returned to India. It was during the voyage thither from the Gulf that Fryer prepared his important monograph entitled 'The Present State of Persia,' which accompanies his Fifth Letter. He was next reappointed 'Chyrurgion' to the factory at Surat, where he discharged the functions of that office for nearly three years, after which he embarked for home, reaching England in August 1682.

In the following year the degree of M.D. was conferred upon Fryer at Cambridge; and in 1697 he was elected a Fellow of the Royal Society. His book was not published until the year next following, what prompted him to expose this Piece to the World, after so many yeares' silence' (he explains) being 'not so much the Importunity of some, as the Impertinencies of others,' and a virtuous ambition to show his 'Diligence in collecting, and Sinceritie in compiling, what may make the Road more easy to the next Adventurers, and satisfy the present Enquirers.' Let us hope that it did so, for it was worthy of those aims at the time, and is now, clarified by enlightened editing, palpably more interesting and instructive than ever.

One of the cardinal assets of the Hakluyt Society is, indeed, its remarkable faculty for enlisting the services, as editors, of scholars whose long residence abroad in various responsible capacities, and consequent familiarity at first hand with the countries, sea routes, languages, and peoples treated of in its volumes, confer upon them special qualifications for the task. They are thus able, by means of introductions, foot-notes, glossaries, bibliographies, and appendices, to give the reader every assistance he requires for the complete understanding of the texts and the identification of old-time names, foreign words, or archaisms occurring in them. The fact that all the Society's editorial work, and in nearly every case its translations from foreign originals, are done as a labour of love and pure devotion to the subject, further ensures

that no pains are spared in achieving results with scrupulous care and accurate scholarship.

Though the volumes of Fryer, Jourdain, Bowrey, and Mundy have been cited as typical examples of the work undertaken of late years by the Council of the Society, it is a fact that all these four relate principally to India. Yet it is not type alone, but diversity of types, that counts; the subscribers not being confined to any single or local interest. Taken as a whole, the Society's selection of works, now just a hundred and fifty in number, shows that this principle has been kept consistently in view. Every continent, every tract of ocean, excepting only the Antarctic, has had its share of the Council's attention, this one exception finding, at present, no place in the Society's prospectus for a definite reason —viz. that the Society prints nothing that relates to less than a century aforetime. The circumnavigation by Dampier, which marked approximately the transition from the 17th to the 18th century, was the limit of modernity adopted by the founders of the Society; but after fifty odd years of existence, when the 19th century had elapsed, the Council decided to revise this canon of its constitution, and selections from the records of another hundred years were declared eligible to receive its attention.

Apart from the reservation mentioned, the Society has not confined its output to any particular age or region, but has adopted the same broad scope as did Hakluyt himself in this respect. It has, indeed, widened its spiritual ancestor's purview in another direction, not limiting its editions to the 'traffiques and discoueries of the English nation,' nor restricting its researches to documents or printed texts originally indited in the vulgar tongue. It has published translations, most of them made by the Society's editors, from not less than a dozen foreign languages. Here and there, it is true, a document is inserted in its original text, either on account of its singularity or rarity, or for comparative reference. These are printed as appendices, as in the case of Odoric's travels, in the second volume of 'Cathay.' Such too is the Deed by which a compact of mutual support and obligation was sealed, in 1775, between Don

Domingo de Boenechea on behalf and by authority of the King of Spain and the ruling chiefs of Tahiti-a State Paper which lay hidden for 130 years in the maze of muniments treasured by the Spanish Government, at Seville, and but for the activities of the Hakluyt Society might still have remained there undisclosed. Akin to it is the Act of Cession by which the natives of Easter Island were induced, in 1770, to put their country at the disposal of the same sovereign, and to which they affixed marks (which have been miscalled signatures) of the same character as the mysterious 'glyphs' or graven tablets since found among that isolated remnant of a people, but never yet clearly explained or deciphered.

The work in which the former of these two documents is now published comprises a set of three volumes, entitled The Quest and Occupation of Tahiti by Emissaries of Spain, 1772-76,' with which may be bracketed an earlier one, 'The Voyage of Don Felipe González,' containing the glyphs. In these four volumes are described a series of exploratory voyages conducted by command of King Charles the Third of Spain, with the object of forestalling British and French enterprise in the southern Pacific. It was the wild scheme of MM. de Surville and Law de Lauriston for driving a trade with the natives of Easter Island, reputed to be 'Davis's Land' (which they confused with Bougainville's' Nouvelle Cythère'), and the series of blunders and misadventures which brought about the délabrement of that scheme that inspired the Viceroy of Peru to despatch a naval expedition from Callao, for reconnaissance purposes, in 1770. This expedition consisted of a 70-gun ship and a frigate—a force afterwards characterised by the Comte de Fleurieu as an 'armement suffisant pour subjuguer tous les Archipels du Grand Océan.'

The commander bore instructions to find the island that Surville had missed, to bring its natives into submission as vassals of His Majesty of Castile, and to expel any foreigners who might be found settled there. In 'The Voyage of Captain Don Felipe González' the Hakluyt Society has brought to light and translated into English all the official documents which determined the expedition just referred to. With them are pub