vi 
PRE FACE. 
ill fortune^ that it required all the tenacity and the scru- 
pulous fidelity of my memory to restore and reproduce 
them as the basis of my observations and the materials 
of my narrative. 
But that scrupulous fidelity which should always dis- 
tinguish the compilation of travels, and which I consider 
the principal merit of mine, demanded that 1 should con- 
secrate to this work the time necessary to ascertain that 
I have omitted nothing essential, and to arrange the facts 
in the exact order in which I had observed and noted 
them. Another not less legitimate cause of delay arose 
from a long and dangerous illness which seized me some 
months after my arrival in France, and exhausted the 
strength which was left me by the long continued fatigues 
and privations of a seventeen months' journey over those 
burning sands so frequently fatal to our European tra- 
vellers. To these causes must also be added the extent of 
my materials, my want of initiation into the art of com- 
position in the most difficult and delicate of languages, 
and the resolution I had formed to avoid having recourse 
to a more experienced pen, except for the correction of 
those errors of style which would naturally escape mine ; 
for I was desirous of offering to the public a composition 
as entirely my own as the observations on which it was 
founded ; a composition which, however deficient in 
studied elegance, should at least be simple, clear, and 
frank, describing the exact extent of my travels and 
exhibiting the traveller under his peculiar traits. With 
regret 1 acknowledge that important observations upon 
