NOTICE OF MR, ROBERTS’S JOURNEY IN THE EAST. 
kindness and assistance from the then governor, Achmet Aga, whom he accompanied 
with above four thousand Christian pilgrims to Jericho and the river Jordan. He 
afterwards visited the Dead Sea, the Lake of Tiberias, the sea-coast and mountain-range 
of Lebanon, and the ruins of Baalbec; such exertions, and the severe privations which 
he suffered on the journey, produced intermittent fever, which compelled him to abandon 
his projected excursions to Damascus and Palmyra. How entirely he had been devoted 
to the great objects he had proposed to himself before he left England, this work 
will abundantly prove. The extraordinary merit and interest of his drawings, when 
seen after his return, created a sensation not easily forgotten; the fidelity of his accurate 
pencil, his skilful and rigid adherence to the truth of costume, his attention to just 
and characteristic effect, were acknowledged by all travellers and artists competent to 
judge. The demand for this work sprang out of the interest thus excited. Commissions 
from royalty and the chief patrons of art crowded upon him for pictures from the 
subjects he had studied in the East, and his contemporaries in art acknowledged his 
merits by the honour of electing him into the Royal Academy. 
