Personal narrative of a year's journey through central and eastern Arabia (1862-63) . lor geological enquiry, and deprived me of the meansfor exact and scientific investigation; for instance, ofthe customary requisites for verifying longitudes andlatitudes, or determining the degrees of heat and cold, ofmoisture and aridity. Worse yet! I was at times unableto take down a single note, much less could I displaya sketching book or photographic apparatus, howeverfair the landscape and tempting the sun; and hence mypen must unaided do the work of the pencil as well asits own, while my readers imagi
Personal narrative of a year's journey through central and eastern Arabia (1862-63) . lor geological enquiry, and deprived me of the meansfor exact and scientific investigation; for instance, ofthe customary requisites for verifying longitudes andlatitudes, or determining the degrees of heat and cold, ofmoisture and aridity. Worse yet! I was at times unableto take down a single note, much less could I displaya sketching book or photographic apparatus, howeverfair the landscape and tempting the sun; and hence mypen must unaided do the work of the pencil as well asits own, while my readers imagination may help tosupply the rest. Why this was so, a few pages of thenarrative will make clear. On the other hand longyears, the best part of my life indeed, passed in theEast, familiarity with the Arabic language till it becameto me almost a mother tongue, and experience in theways and manners of Semiticw nations, to give themtheir general or symbolic name, supplied me with ad-vantages counterbalancing in some degree the draw-backs enumerated above. Besides, the men of the land,. vi Preface rather than the land of the men, were my main objectof research and principal study. My attention wasdirected to the moral, intellectual, and political con-ditions of living Arabia, rather than to the physicalphenomena of the country,—of great indeed, but, tome, of inferior interest. Meanwhile whatever observa-tions on antiquity and science, on- plants and stones,geography and meteorology I was able to make, I shallgive, regretting only their inevitable imperfection. In the hard attempt to render Arab orthography byEnglish letters, I have for the most part followed thesystem adopted by Lane in his delightful ModernEgyptians/ as the nearest approximation intelligible toEnglish readers. However, in representing the initial Jeem by Dj rather than by } (as in the middleor at the end of a word), I have quitted our countrymanfor the universal foreign method; nor have I generallythought it nece
Size: 1792px × 1394px
Photo credit: © The Reading Room / Alamy / Afripics
License: Licensed
Model Released: No
Keywords: ., bookcentury1800, bookdecade1870, bookpublisherlondo, bookyear1871
