INTRODUCTION.

xxiii done less than we might have done under the circumstances in which we were placed ; or to underrate the value of the matter which we have been able to lay before the Public : the materials which we had to work upon are in themselves sufficiently interesting to call for the attention of those who read for information, and the labour which has been employed in collecting them (during the whole course of a long and fatiguing journey) has not been thrown away upon trifles.

We have given to the world (we may say with the greatest accuracy) an extensive tract of coast which has been hitherto unsurveyed, and of which our best charts afforded a very imperfect outline, as will appear by a reference to the maps at the head of the work.

We have obtained the plans of towns and places, (rendered interesting by antiquity, and by the rank which they hold in the pages of history,) of which we have hitherto had no details ; and have described, or made drawings of every object of note which has presented itself on the field of our operations. In fact, whatever may be the merit of our work in other respects, or the value attached to our exertions, we are satisfied ourselves with the matter acquired and with the labour and diligence which has been employed in collecting it ; and it is because our materials are worthy of more attention than we had time and opportunities to bestow upon them, that we regret we are not able to offer them to the Public in a more complete form than we have been able to give them. Had it been in our power to employ excavation, on a more extensive scale than we did, and to bestow as much time upon every object worth attention as its importance appeared to demand, our work could have been a more perfect one ; that is to say, it would have treated of art, and its details more exclusively (we mean the details of sculpture, architecture, and painting,) than it does in the shape which it at present