In The Editor's Wish, However, To Preserve This Originality,
He Cannot Flatter Himself That Incorrect Expressions May Not Sometimes
Have Been Left.
In regard to the Greek inscriptions, he thinks it
necessary only to remark, that although the propriety of furnishing
The
reader with fac-similes of all such interesting relicts of ancient
history cannot in general be doubted, yet in the present instance, the
trouble and expense which it would have occasioned, would hardly have
been compensated by the importance of the monuments themselves, or by
the degree of correctness with which they were copied by the traveller.
They have therefore been printed in a type nearly resembling the Greek
characters which were in use at the date of the inscriptions, and the
Editor has taken the liberty of separating the words, and of supplying
in the small cursive Greek character, the defective parts of the
traveller's copies.
The Editor takes this opportunity of stating, that in consequence of
some discoveries in African geography, which have been made known since
the publication of Burckhardt's Travels in Nubia, he has made some
alterations in the maps of the second edition of that work. The
observations of Captain Lyon have proved Morzouk to be situated a degree
and a half to the southward of the position formerly assigned to it, and
his enquiries having at the same time confirmed the bearing and distance
between Morzouk and Bornou, as reported by former travellers, a
corresponding change will follow in the latitude of Bornou, as well as
in the [p.xviii]position of the places on the route leading to those two
cities from the countries of the Nile.
A journey into Nubia, by the Earl of Belmore, and his brother, the Hon.
Capt. Corry, has furnished some latitudes and longitudes, serving to
correct the map of "the course of the Nile, from Assouan to the confines
of Dongola", which the Editor constructed from the journals of
Burckhardt, without the assistance of any celestial observatians. The
error in the map as to the most distant point observed by Lord Belmore
is however so small, that it has not been thought necessary to make any
alteration in that map for the second edition of Burckhardt's Journey in
Nubia; but the whole delineation of this part of the Nile will be
corrected from the recent observations, in a new edition of the
Supplement to the Editor's general Map of Egypt.
Since the Journey of Lord Belmore, Mr. Waddington and Mr. Hanbury,
taking advantage of an expedition sent into AEthiopia by the Viceroy of
Egypt, have prolonged the examination of the Nile four hundred miles
beyond the extreme point reached by Burckhardt; and some French
gentlemen have continued to follow the army as far as Sennaar. The
presence of a Turkish army in that country will probably furnish greater
facilities for exploring the Bahr el Abiad, or western branch of the
Nile, than have ever before been presented to travellers; there is
reason to hope, that the opportunity will not be neglected, and thus a
survey of this celebrated river from its sources to the Mediterranean,
may, perhaps, at length be made, if not for the first time, for the
first time at least since the extinction of Egyptian science.
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