Page:The inner life of Syria, Palestine, and the Holy Land.djvu/12

PREFACE. This "book contains little History, Geography, or Politics; no Science, Ethnography, Botany, Geology, Zoology, Mineralogy, or Antiquities.

Exploration and the harder travels, such as the Tulul es Safa, the Hauran, the Leja, the Alah, and other wilder parts of Syria, have been described by 'Captain Burton and myself in “ Unex¬ plored Syria; ” but for all that, this book contains things women will like to know.

I have followed my husband everywhere, gleaning only woman’s lore, and I hope that the daily jottings of my private journal will yield a sketeh of the inner life of the Holy Land in general, and of Damascus in particular. I wish to convey an idea of the life which an Englishwoman may make for herself in the East. In so doing I have found it difficult to avoid being too personal, or egotistical, or too frank, but I do not know how to tell my story in any other way, and I hope that in exchange for my experiences my readers will be indulgent. I have been often accused of writing as if it were intended as an address for the Royal Geographical Society, that is, in a quasi-professional way. I conclude that this happened because I always wrote with and for my husband, and under his direction. This is my first in¬ dependent publication, and I try the experiment of writing as if