Extracts From a Journal, Written on the Coasts of Chili, Peru, and Mexico, in the Years 1820, 1821, 1822 #260856

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.