PREFACE. xiii 



the error of judgment which has led me, together 

 with those who have here shared my responsibility, 

 to offer for his perusal pages prepared at first mainly 

 for private friends, but which it was afterwards 

 thought might possibly prove of interest to a some- 

 what wider circle. 



Further, with reference to the length of time 

 which has elapsed between the date of the writer's 

 death and the publication of this volume, I can 

 only urge in extenuation of this circumstance 

 that a considerable period necessarily intervened 

 before the traveller's journals and papers reached 

 this country, that they required when they arrived 

 much care in their disposal, and that the whole 

 of the natural history collections had to be gone 

 through systematically before being finally placed in 

 competent hands for arrangement and classification. 

 The delay has enabled me to include in the 

 volume the papers in the Appendix on the latter 

 subject, contributed by very able hands, which I 

 believe will add interest to the whole ; and that not 

 only in the case of scientific readers, but of all those 

 who would realize in a measure what it is which 

 makes up the life and experiences of the naturalist 

 traveller in his wanderings in distant lands. I may 

 add, moreover, that the general state and condition 

 of the country of which these pages treat would 

 appear, from the accounts of those who have recently 



