COLUMBIA

BY

EDWARD DICEY.

LATE SPECIAL CORRESPONDENT OF THE DAILY TELEGRAPH IN THE EAST.

IN TWO VOLUMES.

VOL. I.

London:

MACMILLAN AND CO.

1870.

[The Right of Translation and Reproduction is reserved.]

B.30

The rep. B.

TO THE READER.

On Christmas Day I landed

Ar the close of last September I left Paris for Constantinople, via the Danube. at Marseilles, on my return from Alexandria. During these three months I visited Turkey, the Holy Land, and Egypt, under circumstances of somewhat exceptional interest. An invitation to be present at the opening of the Suez Canal was the immediate cause of my journey. But I made it my object also to see as much of the Morning Land, of whose marvels the canal across the Isthmus is only the least and latest, as time and opportunity would permit. The result of my observations was communicated to the journal I then represented, in a series of letters, which I now give to the public in a collected form. That many of these letters were written in great haste, under circumstances of extreme difficulty, and with scant time for testing the impression of the moment by careful reflection, is a fact of which nobody can be so well aware as I who wrote them. But yet-speaking not so much of my own epistles as of the class to which they belong-I hold that the descriptions of special correspondents have a distinct

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