INTRODUCTION. 
xxiii 
done less than we might have done under the circumstances in 
which we were placed ; or to underrate the value of the matter which 
we have been able to lay before the Public : the materials which we 
had to work upon are in themselves sufficiently interesting to call 
for the attention of those who read for information, and the labour 
which has been employed in collecting them (during the whole course 
of a long and fatiguing journey) has not been thrown away upon 
trifles. 
We have given to the world (we may say with the greatest accu- 
racy) an extensive tract of coast which has been hitherto unsur- 
veyed, and of which our best charts afforded a very imperfect out- 
line, as will appear by a reference to the maps at the head of the 
work. 
We have obtained the plans of towns and places, (rendered inter- 
esting by antiquity, and by the rank which they hold in the pages of 
history,) of which we have hitherto had no details ; and have 
described, or made drawings of every object of note which has 
presented itself on the field of our operations. In fact, whatever 
may be the merit of our work in other respects, or the value attached 
to our exertions, we are satisfied ourselves with the matter acquired 
and with the labour and diligence which has been employed in collect- 
ing it ; and it is because our materials are worthy of more attention 
than we had time and opportunities to bestow upon them, that we 
regret we are not able to offer them to the Public in a more complete 
form than we have been able to give them. Had it been in our 
power to employ excavation, on a more extensive scale than we did, 
and to bestow as much time upon every object worth attention as its 
importance appeared to demand, our work could have been a more 
perfect one ; that is to say, it would have treated of art, and its 
details more exclusively (we mean the details of sculpture, architec- 
ture, and painting,) than it does in the shape which it at present 
