Page:Voyage in search of La Perouse, volume 1 (Stockdale).djvu/18

 the French work in quarto, are sold for six guineas, being thrice the price of the present translation.

* ** In the original, the distances are all expressed in the new French denominations of metres, decametres, &c. and the Author has given a table for reducing them to toises. But, in the translation, the reader has been spared that trouble, by every where inserting the equivalent toises, or French fathoms. A toise is equal to six French feet, or nearly to six feet five inches, English measure: 2,853 toises make a geographical or nautical league, twenty of which make a degree of a great circle of the earth. Hence, to reduce toises to nautical leagues, divide them by 2,853, the quotient will be the leagues, and the remainder the odd toises. INTRO