INTRODUCTION. 



THE man who sits down to write a faithful account of a 

 foreign country, in which he has resided for any length of 

 time, has, strange as it may appear, a far more difficult task 

 before him, than he who travels hastily through it, takes 

 as it were a bird's-eye view of the land and its inhabitants, 

 jots down in his note-book his remarks on men, manners, 

 and things in general, and then gives to the world a de- 

 scription of the country, and the people, as they appeared 

 to him during a flying visit; a description too often coloured 

 by hasty and erroneously formed opinions. It matters not 

 to him whether he gives pleasure to the inhabitants of the 

 country, which he may never see again, by a flattering 

 remark, or wounds their feelings, by an ill-formed opinion. 

 He finds fault with manners and customs, solely because he 

 is unused to them. He is too apt to jump at conclusions and 

 form ideas, which a closer study of the subject would often 

 convince him were wrong, and on this account too much 

 faith should never be placed, on the casual observations of 

 a mere traveller. 



But if such a man were likely to err by forming too 

 hasty an opinion, he is nearly certain to avoid falling into an 

 error from which a foreigner, who has resided for some years 



