[Illustration: Day & Haghe, Lith^{rs} to the Queen SHIPWRECK NEAR THE ISLAND OF RHODES London, Henry Colburn, G^t. Marlborough S^t., 1846.] TRAVELS OF LADY HESTER STANHOPE; FORMING THE COMPLETION OF HER MEMOIRS. NARRATED BY HER PHYSICIAN. IN THREE VOLUMES. VOL. I. LONDON: HENRY COLBURN, PUBLISHER, GREAT MARLBOROUGH STREET. 1846. Frederick Shoberl, Junior, Printer to His Royal Highness Prince Albert, 51, Rupert Street, Haymarket, London. TO JOHN SCOTT, ESQ., M.D. OF THE UNIVERSITY OF OXFORD, AND FELLOW OF THE ROYAL COLLEGE OF PHYSICIANS OF LONDON, A GENTLEMAN AT ONCE EMINENT FOR HIS EXTENSIVE ACQUAINTANCE WITH ORIENTAL LANGUAGES, AND FOR HIS CLASSICAL KNOWLEDGE, THESE VOLUMES ARE INSCRIBED, BY HIS OBLIGED FRIEND, THE AUTHOR. PREFACE. The TRAVELS now presented to the public are intended to complete the MEMOIRS of Lady Hester Stanhope; and the author trusts that the interest excited by his former work--shown by the rapid sale of an extensive first edition, and the demand for a second--will be manifested equally for this. Indeed, he cannot doubt that the reader will be anxious to learn by what steps an unprotected woman progressively gained so marked an ascendency in a strange land, the language and the usages of which were altogether contrary to her own, whereby the attempt became so much the more difficult. As, then, the MEMOIRS embraced a period of about fifteen years, in which the author endeavoured to trace the causes that led to the “decline and fall” of her ladyship’s somewhat visionary empire in the East, the TRAVELS will now take up her history from the time she quitted England, and, by a faithful narrative of her extraordinary adventures, show the rise and growth of her Oriental greatness.