To preserve in the translation the Defoe-like simplicity of the original narrative of the young French Canadian, has been his chief care.

Having read many narratives of travel and adventure in our northwestern wilderness, he may be permitted to say that he has met with none that gives a more vivid and picturesque description of it, or in which the personal adventures of the narrator, and the varying fortunes of a great enterprise, mingle more happily, and one may say, more dramatically, with the itinerary.

The clerkly minuteness of the details is not without its charm either, and their fidelity speaks for itself.

Take it altogether, it must be regarded as a fragment of our colonial history saved from oblivion; it fills up a vacuity which Mr.IRVING'S classic work does not quite supply; it is, in fact, the only account by an eye-witness and a participator in the enterprise, of the first attempt to form a settlement on the Pacific under the stars and stripes.
The editor has thought it would be interesting to add Mr.Franchere's Preface to the original French edition, which will be found on the next page.
BALTIMORE, _February 6, 1854_..