10025 B21 A JOURNAL OF TRAVELS IN EGYPT, ARABIA PETRE, AND DURING 1841-2. BY DAVID MILLARD. ROCHESTER: PRINTED BY ERASTUS SHEPARD 1 8 4 3. Entered, according to Act of Congress, in the year 1843, by DAVID MILLARD, in the Clerk's Office of the District Court of the United States for the Northern THE main object of the journey, the leading incidents of which are detailed in the following sheets, is sufficiently explained in the first chapter. While traveling for the benefit of my health, much of my time was employed in making critical observations and entering minutes of the result in my daily Journal. From what I now present, the reader will readily perceive that the task was one of considerable labor. The whole work is the result of my own personal observations, with some small additional aid derived by comparing notes with works of previous travelers. Of my descriptive details, I fear not criticism, but rather court it. I am confident the more closely examined, the stronger will be the evidence of their entire correctness. In describing, I have aimed to do it in the most concise and plain manner, that the reader may take up this volume and intellectually travel the whole journey with me. I have aimed to shun all useless redundancy in language-avoid fanciful embellishments, and give plain, naked truth. Having no sect or party of men to please, I have written wholly independent of bias and prepossession. On many localities named in the Sacred History, the traveler in the East, will, at this late period, have necessarily to exercise his own judgment. In this particular, I claim not infallibility, but simply the right of speaking and thinking for myself. My decisions, however, are as open to criticism as those of others. Let them be testsd by impartial investigation. While the ordinary reader will find in this volume much to please and interest him, the devout Christian will, I trust, find nothing incompatible with true piety. In ranging over the principal scenery of the Bible, I saw continually before me much, very much, to strengthen the faith of the Christian. I have conse quently made occasional applications of matters and things as I saw them, to the word of sacred prophecy. No Christian can travel over the land of prophetic wonders, without there reading on the very face of nature, the truth of divine Revelation. It is confidently believed, that no volume of equal dimensions, can be found to contain more information on the countries of which this treats, than the one I here present. I have made no effort to see how much I could write, but have endeavored to see how much could be detailed within any thing like reasonable limits. The world is full of books, furnishing abundance for every one to read. Generally, at the present day, he who seeks information by reading, wishes to obtain it with as little unnecessary expense, labor and time, as may comport with the object of his pursuit. Give us multum in parvo, is the language of two-thirds of readers. Here, then, you have it in one volume. Finally, such as the work is, I commit it to an impartial public, hoping it will entertain all into whose hands it may fall, and especially aid the Christian to a more perfect understanding of the sacred oracles of God. WEST BLOOMFIELD, N. Y., January, 1843. THE AUTHOR. |