ΤΟ ROBERT MEIKLAM, ESQ. M. R. Y. S MY DEAR MEIKLAM, In remembrance of the many delightful days we have spent together in visiting the sacred and classic scenes of other lands, and in gratitude for the facilities and assistance you afforded me, and the interest you evinced in the researches and investigations in which I was engaged during our tour, I have now to perform the pleasing task of dedicating to you the accompanying volumes. That you may long continue to enjoy that health which our voyage was so much the means of restoring, is the anxious desire of Your attached Friend, THE AUTHOR. PREFACE. THE appearance of a new Book of Travels naturally suggests the questions, what claims has the author on public attention? what new feature does his book exhibit, or what discoveries has he made? My answer is, that I have travelled in a different capacity from many of the able tourists who have described the interesting scenes which form the subject of my present volumes. In September, 1837, my friends Sir Henry Marsh and Professor Graves, proposed that I should accompany, as medical attendant, a gentleman who was about to make a voyage for the benefit of his health. Anxiety to see the world, coupled with the fact of my own health being then in a precarious state, induced me gladly to accept of this kind offer. At their suggestion, I undertook to collect information relative to the climate of the places we should visit, and also to keep a register of their temperature. At the solicitation of other friends, I made a daily note of those objects which struck me as interesting in the countries we visited. From these notes the present volumes have been arranged; but, instead of dragging my readers through the daily routine of our adventures and misadventures, I have in general, endeavoured rather to condense the substance of what I saw and observed in Foreign Lands, into a more connected narrative. Voyaging, as my friend Mr. R. Meiklam did in his own yacht of 130 tons, with all the comforts such a mode of transit could command, and bending our course wherever climate or curiosity attracted us, we probably suffered fewer privations and mischances than fall to the lot of the generality of travellers, and at the same time, we were perfectly at leisure to examine, without interruption or hindrance, whatever objects of interest we met with on our route. Whatever of the marvellous my narrative may have lost by these means, I trust it may have gained corresponding advantages of a more solid description.-How far I have been enabled to avail myself of the advantages I have mentioned, or of those which all medical men enjoy in eastern countries, it is for the reader to determine. On the characteristics of climates in reference to disease, little has been added to our stock of infor |