Of travellers who visited Palestine during the early Turkish period, the first in importance is the shrewd and moderate Maundrell (1697 A.D.).[27] He was chaplain of the English factory at Aleppo, which dated back to the time of Elizabeth, and the account of his travels shows that it was more difficult to traverse Palestine in his days than to penetrate into Eastern Mongolia in the days of Rubruquis and Marco Polo. Among the tyrannical chiefs of various small districts who robbed and annoyed him was Sheikh Shibleh near Jenin, whose tomb is now a sacred shrine on the hill above Kefr Kud. Of this holy man he records that “he eased us in a very courteous manner of some of our coats, which now (the heat both of the climate and season increasing upon us) began to grow not only superfluous but burdensome.” In these early days travelling was perilous, and, as a rule, only possible in disguise. In 1803 the journey of Seetzen was specially valuable, and the travels of the celebrated Burckhardt followed soon after in 1809-16. Both these explorers died in the East before their self-allotted tasks were complete. In 1816 Buckingham (still remembered by the elder generation as a gallant explorer) visited Palestine, and in 1817 Irby and Mangles made an adventurous journey in the country east of the Jordan. Their account is still valuable for this region. From that time forward the accounts of personal visits to the country become too numerous to be here recorded. The names of Bartlett, Wilson, Töbler, Thomson, Lynch, De Saulcy, Van de Velde, Williams, and Porter are among the better known of those who preceded or were contemporary with the celebrated Robinson. [Illustration: PORTRAIT OF DR. EDWARD ROBINSON (_Born 1794, Died 1863_).] But it was only in 1838 that really scientific exploration of Palestine began with the journey of the famous American (Dr. Robinson), whose works long continued to be the standard authority on Palestine geography, and whose bold and original researches have been so fully confirmed by the excavations and explorations of the last twenty years. [Illustration: PORTRAIT OF SIR CHARLES WILSON. _From a Photograph by Maull & Fox, Piccadilly._] To this same period, preceding actual surveys, belongs the work of De Vogüé, whose monographs on the Temple, the Dome of the Rock, the churches of Palestine, and his splendid volume of plates for Northern Syrian architecture, together with his collection and decipherment of various early inscriptions in the country, give him the highest rank as an Orientalist. With his name must be coupled that of Waddington, who first attempted to form a corpus of Greek texts from inscriptions found in Palestine, while the standard authority on Phœnician and Hebrew texts is the recently published corpus of Semitic inscriptions by Renan. [Illustration: PORTRAIT OF SIR C. WARREN.]