ABSTRACT
This translation tries, as far as possible, to be faithful to the text and to reproduce the language and spirit of the cumbersome Dutch prose of François Valentijn, while at the same time endeavouring to make it intelligible to the modern reader. The long sentences and the interlinking of many ideas, the irregular punctuation and the frequent parenthetical clauses have sometimes been rationalised, though generally the framework of the original Valentijn sentence has been maintained.
