Extracts From a Journal, Written on the Coasts of Chili, Peru, and Mexico, in the Years 1820, 1821, 1822 e-bog

Whilst the greatest effort has been made to ensure the quality of this text, due to the historical nature of this content, in some rare cases there may be minor issues with legibility. Arman the lapse of more than eighteen years since the voyage was made of which these volumes give a hurried, but faithful sketch, I have been called upon to revise them for their republication, in a new and cheaper shape, better suited, as I am led to hope, to the taste of a large class of readers whom it is essentially important to interest in the class of topics here treated of. South America, when I visited it in 1820, 1821, and 1822, was in a state of violent revo lation from end to end, and the field being so vast and complicated as to render any detailed account impossible, I conceived that I should be doing more justice to the subject to extract from my journal only such points as appeared best calculated to give a general, but, at the same time, a just impression of the momentous scenes then passing. I adopted this course, on the principle that would have guided me in describing the ravages of an earthquake, which I might have happened to witness, where any attempt to describe the whole would manifestly lead to confusion while the narration of a selected few of those circumstances which actually fell under my own observation, might, if faith fully painted, help to elucidate the whole catastrophe.