This is an account very different from the compilations which are undertaken for booksellers, by persons wholly unacquainted with the subject, and who generally have neither sufficient diligence nor skill to regulate the multifarious materials which lie scattered before them, perhaps in an hundred volumes, nor even to reject, much less reconcile the inconsistencies and contradictions with which such materials always abound.
Major Rogers has travelled through great part of the country he has described, in the course of his duty as an officer in his majesty’s army, and has received accounts of other parts immediately from the inhabitants, or from persons who had been carried prisoners thither, and afterwards released.
The work is concise and yet full; and the knowledge it contains is acquired with pleasure, and retained with ease, by the regularity of the method, and perspicuity of the stile.
The author gives an account of every province separately, and of its first discovery and settlement; he describes its situation as to latitude and longitude, and to the countries and seas by which it is bounded; its extent; its rivers; its climate; its commodities, buildings, and number of inhabitants: With a particular attention to such facts and circumstances as appeared most interesting in a political or commercial view.
In this work there is also an account of the interior part of America, a territory much larger than the whole continent of Europe, and hitherto almost wholly unknown. This territory he has considered under three several divisions, marked out by three great rivers that rise near the center of it, St. Lawrence, the Christino, and the Mississippi.
The river St. Lawrence he has traced, and is pretty well acquainted with the country adjacent to it, as far up as lake Superior; and with the country from the Green Bay westward, to the Mississippi at the Gulph of Mexico: He has also travelled the country adjacent to the Ohio, and its principal branches; and that between the Ohio and the lakes Erie and Meshigan, and the countries of the Southern Indians; and his situation gave him opportunities of gaining accounts of the other parts, more particular and authentic than any other.
He has subjoined such an account of the Indians, their customs and manners, as gives a just idea of the genius and policy of the people, and of the method in which they are to be treated by those who wish to preserve a safe and advantageous commerce with them. This is a very entertaining as well as useful part of the work, for which the Major was particularly qualified, by a long and experimental acquaintance with their several tribes and nations, both in peace and war.
It is proposed to continue this History in a second volume, containing maps of the colonies and the interior country, in which the faults and deficiencies of those already extant will be corrected and supplied; by subscription; the price one guinea.
(Some extracts from this work shall be occasionally given in the future numbers of this miscellany.)
JOURNALS OF MAJOR ROBERT ROGERS: containing an account of the several excursions he made, under the generals who commanded on the continent of America, during the late war. From which may be collected the most material circumstances of every campaign on that continent, from the commencement to the conclusion of the war. From the specimen of the work now before us, it appears that the accounts of Major Rogers may be depended upon by the public; they are undoubtedly as authentic as they are important and necessary to those who would acquire a thorough understanding of the nature and progress of the late military operations in North America.