Page images
PDF
EPUB

PREFACE.

WHILE at Beyrout, after my Mesopotamian tour, I looked at the map; there was nothing to do, all was filled in, Kesrowan, Jerusalem, the Haouran. If I bought tape in a shop on Ludgate-hill, ten to one if the person who served me, had not taken a return-ticket by the steamer, rushed in a fortnight over Syria and Egypt, and knew as much, at all events, as his dragoman thought he ought to know for his money. The compasses dropped from my hand in despair; there was nothing for it but to get a friendly doctor quietly to make me a Mussulman, and joining the caravan, go on to Mecca-but, no: here is a wild part, bare from Safyta to Nahr El Kebir, which

[blocks in formation]

Arrowsmith has never ventured to put on copper. I turned to Kelly, almost the only book that has survived my journey, and there actually in print saw "We have now skirted both flanks of the mountains inhabited by the Ansyrii, or Ansayryan, and Ismalys, without having made any intimate acquaintance with these strange tribes, or their abodes, which all European travellers seem very shy of approaching."

Ten thousand thanks, fellow travellers. Here was untrodden ground. I was off; and fixed my head-quarters at Latakia.

In this journey, or rather in its first stage, others far abler than myself have trodden before me; but the reader will allow that I have not sought to copy or relate what they also saw. I came like a pilgrim, and but put mortar in the interstices, and replaced stones broken through the lapse of timethus endeavouring only to relate what others had overlooked. In this, I hope, the reader will find pleasure.

My travels in the Mountains of the Ansayrii

[blocks in formation]

are new, and many of the places were never before visited by Europeans. To this new route let me invite the reader, the traveller, the savant. The Ansayrii have long been an enigma— travellers have skirted, have beheld from a distance, but have never ventured among their hospitable tribes. Even Burckhardt slept but one night at an Ansayrii village. Pococke, I think, says merely that they make and drink abundance of good wine. The pioneer has been-he has returned safe. From what I know of them, I invite travellers among them, and in the language of the Arab say, " Ta faddall eh mah salaame-step in, and peace be with you!"

NOVEMBER, 1851.

CONTENTS.

« PreviousContinue »