VI PREFACE. 



Danube to Pest and Vienna, returning to Corfu 

 by Trieste. 



Finding, on my arrival in England a few months 

 since, that the notes which I had hastily thrown 

 together during these excursions were more 

 voluminous than I had anticipated, it occurred to 

 me that I could not better employ my leisure 

 time during my leave of absence than in revising 

 them, and I now give them to the public with no 

 other pretension than that of an attempt on my 

 part faithfully to depict some very interesting 

 scenes it fell to my lot to witness. 



The observations in the following pages on the 

 countries through which I passed were suggested 

 to me — an impartial observer — by the actual state 

 in which those countries appeared to me to be. 

 The tottering condition of the Ottoman empire — 

 the very evident waning of the Turkish moon — 

 cannot fail to strike forcibly any one who pene- 

 trates into the interior of any of the unhappy 

 provinces whose Christian populations are still 

 under the rule of the Musselmaun despot — Great 

 Britain's ally. 



