It is to be hoped, however, that no material omission of really useful information for the purposes of the emigrant has taken place: for the rest, the compiler has endeavored in compressing information, to combine precision and conciseness. In preparing the statistical tables and admitting references and illustrations, the assertions hazarded will be rendered sufficiently obvious; for when treating on those particulars it will be found that his object has been to generalize the information they are capable of presenting, and to reduce this information within its proper compass.
These pages will not afford matter for a general or even a partial survey, of the scenery, soil, resources, peoples, laws, and institutions of the United States, however much it might Instruct the emigrant to be informed on these several particulars. He should no doubt seek information on these points; and we have referred him to the sources whence it may be drawn, and the credit to be attached to the various sketches, books of travel, histories, political and descriptive works on these several subjects. Without the knowledge to be acquired by reading of this kind, his information will be very limited, and he will be thrown on a new career of life, to learn by his own experience, conformity to strange ideas, habits,
