There are two editions of this journal in our older Collections of Voyages and Travels, but both exceeding defective and imperfect.  The first of these is in the Pilgrims of Purchas, which is said to have been “Collected out of the Journal of Sir Thomas Roe, Knight, Lord Ambassador from his Majesty of Great Britain, to the Great Mogul.”  It is evidently to be considered as an abridgement made by Purchas, which, indeed, he fully acknowledges in a postscript, in the following terms:—­“Some readers may perhaps wish they had the whole journal, and not thus contracted into extracts of those things out of it which I conceived more fit for the public.  And for the whole, myself would have wished it; but neither with the honourable Company, nor elsewhere, could I learn of it, the worthy knight himself being now employed in like honourable embassage from his majesty to the Great Turk.”  Besides that it is a mere abridgement, often most confusedly, and almost unintelligibly tacked together, this article in The Pilgrims breaks off abruptly in a most interesting part of the narrative, which we have now no means to supply.  The full title of this article in The Pilgrims is as follows:—­“Observations collected out of the Journal of Sir Thomas Roe, Knight, Lord Ambassador from his Majesty the King of Great Britain, to the Great Mogul.  Consisting of Occurrences worthy of Memory, in the way, and at the Court of the Mogul; together with an Account of his Customs, Cities, Countries, Subjects, and other Circumstances relating to India.”

[Footnote 183:  Purch.  Pilgr.  I. 535.  Churchill’s Collect.  I. 617.]

The other edition of this journal is in the collection published by the Churchills, of which we quote from the third edition of 1744, reprinted by Lintot and Osburn, booksellers in London.  Of this edition the editor of that collection gives the following account:—­“Sir Thomas Roe has before appeared in print, in part at least, in the collection of Purchas, since translated into French, and published in the first volume of the collection by Thevenot.  He now comes again abroad with considerable additions, not foisted in, but taken from his own original manuscript, of which it would appear that Purchas only had an imperfect copy.  These additions, it is true, are not great in bulk, but they are valuable for the subject; and several matters, which in the other collection are brought in abruptly, are here continued in a more methodical manner.”

After an attentive comparison of these two former editions, it obviously appears that the edition by Purchas, in 1625, is in general more circumstantial and more satisfactory than that of Churchill, in 1744, notwithstanding its superior pretensions, as above stated.  Yet, on several occasions, the edition in Churchill gives a more intelligible account of particulars, and has enabled us, on these occasions, to restore what Purchas, by careless abbreviation, had left an obscure and almost unintelligible jumble of words.  The present edition, therefore, is formed upon a careful collation of these two former, supplying from each what was defective in the other.  On the present occasion, the nautical and other observations made by Sir Thomas Roe during the voyage from England to Surat, are omitted, having been already inserted into the account of that voyage by Captain Peyton.