There remains only one observation to be made by the member of the Committee, upon whom has devolved the task of editing the present volume. Although Mr. Burckhardt was gifted by nature with sagacity and memory for making accurate observations, and with taste and imagination to give a lively description of them, it must not be forgotten, that he wrote in a language which was not his native tongue, which he did not learn until he was twenty-five years of age, and in the writing of which he had little exercise, until he had arrived in those countries, where he very seldom heard it spoken, and where he had still more rarely any opportunities of referring to English models of composition. When, in addition to these great disadvantages, it is considered that the journal which forms the contents of this volume, was only once transcribed from his collection of daily notes, and was written, as the traveller himself states, in the corner of an open court, by the side of his camels, under the influence of the hot winds of the Desert, and under the sufferings of an ophthalmia, the reader will easily believe that the Editor has found it necessary to make some alterations in the diction of the original manuscript. Some changes of arrangement have also been occasionally required, in order to bring together dispersed observations upon the same subject, which, having been noticed as they occurred, are, as usual in the first transcription of a traveller’s journal, found in such a desultory and unconnected state, as could not be agreeable to the reader. In these attempts of the Editor to present the work to the public in a more perspicuous form, it has at the same time been his most studious endeavour to make as few changes as possible; for he would much rather expose himself to the imputation of having left passages liable to be criticized for inelegance and an idiom not English, than to that of having, in the remotest manner, injured the spirit and originality of the Author’s thoughts and expressions, by an ill-judged attempt to polish or correct them. FOOTNOTES: [Footnote 1: Bomba was a Greek colony under the name of Plateia. It was the first possession of the Greeks on the coast of Africa. (Herodot. 1. 4. c. 151.)] [Footnote 2: This Tripoli is distinguished from the city of which my fellow traveller is a native, by the appellation of Tarabolaus fel Shark, or Tripoli of the East.] [Footnote 3: This letter is addressed to Sir Joseph Banks.] [Footnote 4: Another part of the nation of the Aenezy, who live in the Nedjd, are faithful Wahabi, and their chief Ibn Haddali, is the third in command and esteem amongst that sect.] [Footnote 5: They have not been published, and it is feared the greater part of his manuscripts are lost.]