3 Review(s)

This set of 3 volumes is the collection of narratives of travellers who went over the larger part of Asia. The First Volume contains “General Travels through Asia,” including the narratives of those travellers who went over the larger part of it, or passed from one to another of its great divisions. The leading natural divisions of Asia is discribed in the Second and Third Volumes, with the travels performed through each, are successively treated of. It has not been attempted to give any descriptive account of Asia. This subject is too extensive and varied to be fully treated without encroaching on the main object, which was not description, but the history of discoveries. The object has been rather to exhibit the great machine of Asiatic society in movement and action, than to give a vague delineation of its qualities. Care, however, has been taken, that the analysis of the recent travels into each district should be made to include a pretty full view of its present state. The only great extension of this principle has been in the case of Indostan. The Author has so often heard regret expressed at the want of any concise view of the learned investigations lately made into the religion, literature, and social state of this vast portion of the British empire, that he has employed some portion of the work in attempting to supply this deficiency.