E-text prepared by MFR, Craig Kirkwood, and the Online Distributed Proofreading Team (http://www.pgdp.net) from page images generously made available by Internet Archive (https://archive.org) Note: Project Gutenberg also has an HTML version of this file which includes the original illustrations. See 59702-h.htm or 59702-h.zip: (http://www.gutenberg.org/files/59702/59702-h/59702-h.htm) or (http://www.gutenberg.org/files/59702/59702-h.zip) Images of the original pages are available through Internet Archive. See https://archive.org/details/excursionstocair00jone_0 Transcriber’s note: Text enclosed by underscores is in italics (_italics_). An additional Transcriber’s Note is at the end. EXCURSIONS TO CAIRO, JERUSALEM, DAMASCUS AND BALBEC, FROM THE UNITED STATES SHIP DELAWARE, DURING HER RECENT CRUISE. With an Attempt to Discriminate between Truth and Error in Regard to the Sacred Places of the Holy City. by GEORGE JONES, A. M. Chaplain U. S. Navy; Author of Sketches of Naval Life. New-York: Van Nostrand and Dwight. 1836. Entered according to the Act of Congress of the United States of America, in the year 1836, by Van Nostrand and Dwight, in the Clerk’s Office of the Southern District of New-York. Scatcherd and Adams, Printers, 38 Gold Street. * * * * * TO COMMODORE D. T. PATTERSON, U. S. NAVY, THIS MEMORIAL OF SOME INCIDENTS IN A VERY AGREEABLE CRUISE UNDER HIS COMMAND, IS INSCRIBED, WITH THE RESPECTFUL AND GRATEFUL REGARDS OF THE AUTHOR. PREFACE. The Author had no intention during the cruise of writing such a book. His reasons for now engaging in it are, in addition to those common on such occasions, a belief that the public take a very deep interest in the countries which he has visited, and would be pleased to have further means of information respecting them. The circumstances under which his excursions into Egypt and Syria were made, though limiting his observations to a few cities, gave him some unusual advantages in examining those to which he was allowed access. The reader, he believes, will be surprised to see the changes which the energetic government of Mohammed Ali has wrought in Egypt and Syria; and these are only the beginning of changes. The whole East seems destined before long to a wonderful revolution, if not political, at least mental and moral. It is pleasing to see the present dawnings of light upon two countries the most celebrated in the world; the one for its ancient science, the other for its religion. The night appears to be past, and the day-spring at hand.