and extended triumphs of that Faith in the highly favoured lands of Christendom ; and none have appeared to us so prominent and conspicuous as your own. Your happy and successful efforts for the exposition and establishment of the truth, and the preservation of the privileges of the Church of Christ, and the charity in which they originate and are conducted, excite universal gratitude. With rare wisdom and power, you have been enabled to discourse of both the credentials and the credenda of Christianity. But with these you have not rested satisfied. The agenda of a practical apostolic Christianity, seeking to multiply its conquests both at home and abroad, have been dealt with by you, both theoretically and practically, in a manner which has aroused universal attention, and is deserving of universal imitation. No individual in our day has, under God, been permitted to exercise a wider and a happier influence than yourself. Catholic evangelical Christianity hails you as its most trust-worthy friend. In this work, I invite your attention, and that of the public, to the “ LANDS OF THE BIBLE,” which are associated in our minds with reminiscences and anticipations of the most tender and rapturous interest; and with whose sacred scenes, and wondrous characters, and unparalleled events, we become familiar from our earliest days. In doing this, I am well aware, that of late,-as indeed during some preceding centuries, –a succession of pilgrims have recorded and published the incidents of their travel and observation within these regions; and I have no wish to detract from the importance of their various publications. I respectfully claim a place for my Work, from certain classes of a INSCRIPTION AND PREFACE. vii readers at least, because of the extent of the journey which it narrates, and the objects which it was designed to subserve; because part of the land and ocean over which it is my wish to conduct my reader, has been but partially, if at all, noticed in late publications; and because, even on frequented tracks, I have exercised my own visual organs, and made my own observations and inquiries, without any thing like a slavish deference either to my predecessors or contemporaries. Most travellers who have entered the countries which I ask the reader to traverse with me, have approached them from the distant West; and almost every thing connected with them has presented itself to their view in an aspect of entire novelty, and called forth a burst of fresh European feeling. I betook myself to them from the distant East, in which I had resided about fifteen years, and not altogether a stranger to the nature of their climes, and the manners and customs and languages of their inhabitants, with many of whom I had been brought in contact; and if I have laboured under some disadvantages by my lengthened sojourn in the exsiccating regions of the sun, I have enjoyed certain facilities for movement, and inquiry, and comparison, to which some importance may be attached. In my associates, too, I was peculiarly favoured. I allude especially to John Smith, Esq., and Dhanjibháí Naurojí of Bombay, to the Rev. William Graham of Damascus, and to the other friends, to whom I have expressed my great obligations in the body of my book, and whose assistance and friendship I shall long remember with the deepest gratitude. The work, which, as it regards one of the great objects which I kept particularly in view throughout my travels, comes nearest to my own, is the “ Biblical Researches in Palestine, Mount Sinai, and Arabia Petraa," of the Rev. Edward Robinson, D.D. That most able and learned book, has entirely exhausted many subjects of inquiry connected with Biblical Geography. It is remarkably accurate, as a whole, in its original descriptions; and it contains historical notices of many localities, which evince the most diligent and successful research, being, in fact, a valuable epitome of the results of ancient and modern travel in the Holy Land. It is a matter of congratulation, that it at once took, and will long maintain, its place as a standard authority. If it has not met with all the popular favour which it merits, this is owing as much to the gravity of the subjects of which it treats, as to the disadvantage to the reader of the union of the more lively personal narrative, with the duller, though still valuable, historical and antiquarian inquiries. In some matters of great interest, I have seen reason to differ from the conclusions of Dr. Robinson,-as the place and circumstances of the passage of the Israelites through the Red Sea, the mount of communion at Sinai, the route of the Israelites immediately after the giving of the Law, the use of some of the ancient excavations at Petra, and various questions connected with the topography of the Holy Land. The reasons of my judgment I have endeavoured to state without dogmatism, and in a spirit, I trust, equally remote from the dangerous extremes of credulity and rationalism. In travelling through the land of Israel, my companions and myself were guided in the identification of Scripture sites, principally by the coincidence of the ancient Hebrew and modern Arabic names, and their visible agreement with the locali INSCRIPTION AND PREFACE. ix In my zation of Scripture, and the notices of Eusebius and Jerome. It was, generally speaking, rather for purposes of confirmation than information respecting them, that we consulted the various works which we had in our possession. Except in a few cases, the grounds of judgment lie within very narrow bounds. The exceptions have, in general, been ably and fully treated by Reland and Dr. Robinson. second volume, I give a list of all the towns and villages mentioned in Scripture in connexion with the possessions of the Israelites, which appear to me to have been identified. It embraces a few which have been brought to notice since my journey was completed. Though I have formed a collection of works on the Holy Land, larger than I have found in any of our public libraries, and though in the preparation of this book I have made an abundant consultation of them, I have studiously confined my references to historical authorities to the illustration of matters which appeared to me of importance in connexion with the distinctive objects which I had specially in view in my wanderings. A full history of individual localities should, I think, be reserved for a Biblical Encyclopædia or Dictionary, or an extension of such a work as that of “ Relandi Palestina ex monumentis veteribus illustrata," which, I agree with Dr. Robinson in thinking, is still a desideratum, and which, of all men, the Doctor, , the American guardiano of the Terra Santa, is the best qualified to execute. In one of your most powerful orations, you have emphatically remarked, that “the business of a missionary is with man.” Keeping this axiom in view, I devoted a great deal of my attention when travelling, to the implementing of a a commission which I had received from one of the Committees of the Church of Scotland, relative to the prosecution of research among the Eastern Jews. Circumstances much favoured me in my intercourse with these people, who are so much beloved for their fathers' sakes; and I have been enabled, both in the first and second parts of my work, to bring to notice some matters connected with them, which, I trust, will be found not altogether devoid of interest and originality. A similar observation I may make, perhaps with more confidence, connected with the remnant of the Samaritans still sojourning at Shechem or Nábulus. The Eastern Christians, the nominal representatives of our Holy Faith in the glorious lands in which it originated, and sojourning on the frontiers, or within the territories of Muhammadanism and Heathenism, and peculiarly exposed to the intrigues of crafty conclaves at Rome and Inyons, called forth special notice, and excited much of my sympathy; and I have devoted a considerable number of pages to an exposition of their creed and condition, and their more general historical connexions. In doing this, I have availed myself of two Lectures, which, in anticipation of the appearance of this work, I have laid before the public since my arrival in Scotland, abridging and enlarging them according to convenience. I have, of course, formed my judgment of these Eastern Churches, from a comparison of them with the evangelical principles which we hold as the truth of God. I extremely regret that I could not take a more favourable view of them than I have done. I trust that what I have said of them may conduce somewhat to extend the too feeble interest which is felt in their behalf by the |