“What a pity,” said I to M. Mazolier, “that we should have lost the result of so many years’ labour and patience!” “There is something yet remaining,” said he; “I was attached at Latakia, my country, to a young Arab, who accompanied M. de Lascaris during all his travels. After his death, being without resources, and deprived even of the arrears of his small salary, which M. de Lascaris had promised him, he returned poor and plundered to his mother. He is now living in some small employ with a merchant of Latakia. I knew him there, and he has often spoken to me of a series of notes that he wrote at the instigation of his patron in the course of their wandering life.” “Do you think,” said I to M. Mazolier, “the young man would consent to sell them?” “I should think so,” he replied; “and the more so, as he has often expressed his desire to present them to the French government. But nothing is so easy as to know this; I will write to Fatalla Sayeghir, which is the name of the young Arab. Ibrahim Pacha’s Tartar will deliver him my letter, and we shall have an answer on his return to Said.” “I commission you,” said I, “to negotiate the affair, and to offer him two thousand piastres for his manuscript.” Some months elapsed before the answer of Fatalla Sayeghir reached me. Returning to Byrauth, I sent my interpreter to negotiate directly for the MS. at Latakia. The terms were accepted, the sum was paid, and the Arabic MS. brought me by M. Mazolier. In the course of the winter, I got them translated with infinite difficulty into the Frank language, and thence translated them into French myself; the public are thus enabled to enjoy the fruits of a ten years’ journeying, which no other traveller has hitherto effected. The extreme difficulty of this triple translation must be an excuse for the style of the notes. The style indeed is of little importance in such works; facts and manners are everything. I am fully satisfied that the first translator has altered nothing; he has only suppressed some tedious details consisting of idle repetitions which availed nothing.