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HOMRA TREE, FORTY-TWO FEET IN CIRCUMFERENCE:

Peculiar to Tropical Climates. Its Fruit is called Gangalos.

[See Page 175.

SEA NILE, THE DESERT,

AND NIGRITIA :

TRAVELS IN COMPANY WITH CAPTAIN PEEL, R. N.
1851-1852.

DESCRIBED BY

JOSEPH H. CHURI, MARONITE,

OF MOUNT LEBANON.

WITH THIRTEEN ARABIC SONGS,

As Sung by the Egyptian Sailors on the Nile,

TRANSLATED, WITH NOTES, AND THE ARABIC WORDS WRITTEN IN ENGLISH AS PRONOUNCED
AND SET TO MUSICAL ANNOTATION; WITH OTHER ARABIC SONGS.

LONDON: PUBLISHED BY THE AUTHOR,
31, KING STREET, HOLBORN.

1853.

-5145-134

DT123 C563

LONDON:

PETTER AND GALPIN, PLAYHOUSE-YARD,

BLACKFRIARS.

186447

PREFACE.

TO THE COURTEOUS READER.

I HOPE, gentle reader, that you will not regret reading these Travels, which, with much diligence, I have undertaken to describe for you. I trust you will derive some pleasure from the account of the Life in the Desert, of the Arabs, of Nubia, of the interesting conversations I held with the people amongst whom I travelled, and of many other things which may serve to give you a just idea of the Blue and White Niles and of the Negroes. You will, no doubt, feel moved to compassion by some dolorous passages; but even these I have tried to mingle with descriptions that will interest you.

I do not intend giving you here a dissertation that would not be to the purpose, but I feel obliged to say one or two things that seem needed. You must know, gentle reader, that I am a Maronite of Mount Lebanon, and at the age of fourteen I was sent to the College of Propaganda, in Rome, to be educated in virtue and doctrine for the ecclesiastical state; and, as I then knew no other language but Arabic and Syriac, I began my course of European studies with the a, b, c, then followed Latin grammar, rhetoric, logic, metaphysics, and one year of divinity. During this time I always kept up the use of

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