The communications in question, operating on the
minds of intelligent Members of the African Society,
-and giving a spur to the curiosity and enterprize of
the agents they might employ, formed a suitable and
necessary P r e f a c e to the undertaking and efforts tfor
practical discovery, and for ensuring the advantages
-thence to be derived.
The compilation of various informations respecting
Africa, had'thus an intrinsic value, as affording premises
of inquiry, and as giving encouragement and
direction to adventure.
But further, and even immediately, wisdom and
sagacity will extract truth from accounts, however
contradictory, and useful and certain inference, from
documents the most ambiguous or incomplete. |
Efforts o f rude ingenuity often suggest not only improvement
but discovery ; the rustic forms a lever to
raise the mass, and the sagacity of.the mechanic applies
it to ascertain the weight.
Science often works with effect on the loose and
disjointed materials which ignorance has heaped
together; ¿compares, arranges, and .connects .their
substances and forms ; shews in their matter, construction,
or decomposition, new uses ; derives new informations,
and adds to the stock of human inventions
and knowledge.
Were it necessary to illustrate such position by
example, the writer would refer, as a special instance,
to the elucidations of Major Rennell on the communications
in question : to that most accurate and acute
philosopher and geographer, the details have afforded
matter of enquiry and deduction of the highest import
to science. By analysis, and a comparative view of
accounts given of journies and places, in reference to
the plans of D ’Anville, and other geographers ; to
modern travels ; to ancient expeditions ; to descriptions
of ancient writers ; and above all, to those of the
father of history, Herodotus ; Major Rennell hath corrected
the map of Africa, with a learning and sagacity
which hath converted conjecture into knowledge ; and on
experience of those who have explored parts of that
great continent, given confidence to each future traveller
who may visit its remotest regions^
Had the proceedings of the Society stopped here,
and its work been confined to the compilation above
alluded to, and to the comments of Msqor Rennell, the