Page:India in the Fifteenth Century, being a Collection of Narratives of Voyages to India.djvu/13

 EDITOR'S PREFACE.

The present collective volume has been produced by the joint labours of three different persons, and hence, in a great measure, has arisen the delay which has taken place in its completion. In the first instance, the translation of the interesting manuscript of Nikitin, procured for the Society from Moscow, through the instrumentality of our president. Sir Roderick I. Murchison, was undertaken by the late estimable Count Wielhorsky, Secretary of the Russian Legation at the Court of St. James's, and by great good fortune was completed by him before his recall. The smallness of this document made it unfit to form a separate work; and it was thought that by bringing together a collection of voyages in the same century, previously untranslated into English, an interesting volume might be formed. Mr. Winter Jones, the