THESE TRAVELS ARE DEDICATED WITH GRATITUDE AND RESPECT TO THE NEIGHBOURING CLERGYMEN WHO SO KINDLY PERFORMED ALL MY PAROCHIAL DUTIES DURING MY VISIT TO THE LAND OF THE MORNING, AND TO ANOTHER ESTEEMED CLERICAL FRIEND, THE ONLY SURVIVING SON OF MY FIRST PATRON, WHOSE ASSISTANT I WAS TILL HIS DEATH. MANSE OF DOLPHINTON, 18th May, 1852. INTRODUCTION. FORTY years since, a trip to Greece was esteemed not only to be difficult, but dangerous. Young men of fortune seldom ventured so far as Malta. The activity of Sterne has long been admired for undertaking a sentimental journey in France, and it required courage in the artist to enter Italy. These countries are now swarming with English tourists, and every year cartloads of travels are published till they have become stale and unprofitable as fetid fish. Morning-ward of Europe matters are still somewhat as they were in France and Italy at the end of the last century. The distance is great, the intercourse limited, and the discomforts are formidable from the warmth of the climate, and even from the dangers of disease and robbery. Above all, the delay occasioned by the voyager being so often put into quarantine, and otherwise detained waiting for steamers, is rather vexatious. But notwithstanding these serious drawbacks, a few sturdy tourists are constantly traversing all the corners of Turkey, and more especially Egypt and Palestine; and several works of very considerable merit have lately appeared as to these countries. The Author, in the spring of last year, was permitted by Divine Providence to accomplish what from his earliest recollections had been the desire of his heart-a journey into the Bible-Lands of the East, into the once stirring localities of Western Asia, and |