The great object and design of the commercial part of this work was similar; to trace the progress of commercial enterprises from the rudest ages of mankind, the changes and transfers it had undergone from one country to another, the causes and effects of these, as well as of its general gradual increase, till, having the whole of Europe under its influence, and aided by that knowledge and civilization with which it had mainly contributed to bless Europe, it had gained its maturity and vigour, and by its own expansive force pushed itself into every part of the globe, in which there existed any thing to attract it.

At the beginning of the eighteenth century, commerce had not indeed assumed those features, or reached that form and dimensions by which it was distinguished at the end of this century; but as its dimensions gradually enlarge, it will be necessary to be less particular and more condensed.

Our plan indeed of being more minute in the early history of geographical science and commercial enterprise, is founded on an obvious as well as a just and important principle.  In the infancy of geography and commerce, every fact is important, as reflecting light on the knowledge and state of mankind at that period, and as bearing on and conducing to their future progress; whereas when geography and commerce have been carried so far as to proceed in their course as it were by their own internal impulse, derived from the motion they have been acquiring for ages, their interest and importance is much diminished from this cause, as well as from the minuteness of the objects to which,—­all the great ones having been previously occupied by them,—­they must necessarily be confined.

Several circumstances co-operated to direct geographical discovery, during the eighteenth century, principally towards the north and north-east of Asia, and the north-west of America.  The tendency and interest of the Russian empire to stretch itself to the east, and the hope still cherished by the more commercial and maritime nations of Europe, that a passage to the East Indies might be discovered, either by the north-east round Asia, or by the north-west, in the direction of Hudson’s Bay, were among the most powerful of the causes which directed discovery towards those parts of the globe to which we have just alluded.

The extent of the Russian discoveries and conquests in the north and north-east of Asia, added much to geographical knowledge, though from the nature of the countries discovered and conquered, the importance of this knowledge is comparatively trifling.  About the middle of the seventeenth century, they ascertained that the Frozen Ocean washed and bounded the north of Asia:  the first Russian ship sailed down the river Lena to this sea in the year 1636.  Three years afterwards, by pushing their conquests from one river to another, and from one rude and wandering tribe to another, they reached the eastern shores of Asia, not far distant from the present site of