Such extracts have been now made from these writers that the
general reader can become acquainted with the adventures and opinions
of the different travellers who have visited El Hejaz during a space of
350 years. Thus, with the second volume of Burckhardt's Travels in
Arabia, the geographer, curious concerning this portion of the Moslem's
Holy Land, possesses all that has as yet been written upon the subject.
The editor, to whom the author in his absence has intrusted his work,
had hoped to have completed it by the simultaneous publication of the
third volume, containing the pilgrimage to Meccah. The delay, however,
in the arrival from India of this portion of the MS. has been such as
to induce him at once to publish El Misr and El Medinah. The concluding
volume on Meccah is now in the hands of the publisher, and will appear
in the Autumn of the present year. Meanwhile the Public will not lose
sight of the subject of Arabia. Part of El Hejaz has lately been
inspected by M. Charles Didier, an eminent name in French literature,
and by the Abbe Hamilton,-persuaded, it is believed, by our author to
[p.xxvii]visit Taif and Wady Laymum. Though entirely unconnected with
the subjects of Meccah and El Medinah, the account of the Sherif's
Court where these gentlemen were received with distinction, and of the
almost unknown regions about Jebel Kora, will doubtless be welcomed by
the Orientalists and Geographers of Europe.
