The Embassy of Sir Thomas Roe to the Court of the Great Mogul 1.13.4

1.13.4

A diligent search having failed to discover the rest of the journal in any known collection, it has been necessary, when the manuscript comes to an end, to fall back upon the mutilated version of Purchas, which carries on the narrative to January 22, 1618. For the remaining year of Roe's stay in India, we are almost entirely dependent upon his letters and such scraps of information as can be gathered from contemporary documents. In the Journal we have interspersed a number of the more important of Roe's letters, nearly all of which are now printed for the first time. It was impossible, within the space available, to include all that are extant; nor was this necessary, for many either deal with matters of detail which have now lost their interest, or else repeat what has been said elsewhere. For the same reasons it has been judged advisable to cut down most of the letters for which we have been able to find room. Each letter has, however, been carefully examined, and it is believed that nothing of real importance has been omitted. In many cases, passages for which room has not been found in the text have been utilised in the notes or in this introduction. Addl. MS. 19277—the other contemporary copy of Roe's manuscript, to which we have already alluded—has, of course, been collated (so far as it goes) with our text, and in a few cases its readings have been followed in preference to those of the principal manuscript.