Page:Travels to Discover the Source of the Nile - In the Years 1768, 1769, 1770, 1771, 1772, and 1773 volume 1.djvu/84

lxviii occasion to regret they have not searched for information in more ancient sources.

work begins with my voyage from Sidon to Alexandria, and up the Nile to the first cataract. The reader will not expect that I should dwell long upon the particular history of Egypt; every other year has furnished us with some account of it, good or bad; and the two last publications of M. Savary and Volney seem to have left the subject thread-bare. This, however, is not the only reason.

Mr Wood and Mr Dawkins had published their Ruins of Palmyra, the late king of Denmark, at his own expence, sent out a number of men, eminent in their several professions, to make discoveries in the east, of every kind, with these very flattering instructions, that though they might, and ought, to visit both Baalbec and Palmyra for their own studies and improvement, yet he prohibited them to so far interfere with what the English travellers had done, as to form any plan of another work similar to theirs. This compliment was gratefully received; and, as I was directly to follow this mission, Mr Wood desired me to return it, and to abstain as much as possible from writing on the same subjects chosen by M. Niebuhr, at least to abstain either from criticising or differing from him on such subjects. I have therefore passed slightly over Egypt and Arabia; perhaps, indeed, I have said enough of both: if any shall be of another opinion, they may have recourse to M. Niebuhr's more copious work; he was the only person of six who lived to come home, the rest having died in different parts of Arabia, without having been able to enter Abyssinia, one of the objects of their mission.