Page:An Introduction to the Survey of Western Palestine.djvu/20

 divisions, towns, villages, ruins, and highways;—the identification of Biblical and other Historical sites;—the inhabitants, their languages, legends and traditions, manners and customs, and superstitions. 5. A general index to the native names of about 9,000 places, with their signification as far as possible. 6. Photographs, sketches, and other illustrations. The plans, memoirs, index, and illustrations, will be combined and published in quarto volumes, now in the press. Three editions of the reduced map are in hand, illustrating: 1. The Modern Geography. 2. The Old Testament, and 3. The New Testament.

The publication of this remarkable survey with its accompaniments, goes far to throw open a splendid field of critical research, in the most satisfactory way. Without such a map of the country as the Fund has produced, the student of the History of Palestine, sacred and profane, ancient, medieval, and modern alike, had to grope about in the midst of uncertainty. Even the most gifted explorers on the ground, could only partially note and record the facts connected with their actual route, while they had no adequate means of bringing the neighbourhood beyond their reach on either side, within the scope of their research. .A map constructed on the basis of route surveys must be unequal to the requirements of modern science. It is but an imperfect substitute for such a work as the present. Few unsurveyed countries had received more able or more abundant attention than Palestine in the form of route surveys; these indeed being combined in its case with more pretentious works, for which neither adequate time nor proper arrangements had however been provided. To form a judgment on the comparative value of the new survey with former publications, the best of which are the latest, but by no means the largest, it is only necessary to examine them together, in any part, when the inexpressible superiority of the new work will at once be observable.