ABSTRACT
ACROSS T H E G R E A T D E S E R T , T O MOROCCO ;
VOL. II.
H E N R Y COLBURN A N D R I C H A R D B E N T L E Y ,
I offer, at length, to the public the narrative of my
travels in the interior of Africa, which should have ap-
peared long since; several causes have, however, con-
curred during the fifteen months that have elapsed since
my return to my native soil, to retard its publication till
the present time. I have brought home, from the regions I
have traversed, only fugitive and very laconic notes, written
in haste and trepidation : they would have been inexo-
rable evidences against me, had I been surprised tracing
unknown characters, and unveiling as it were to the
Whites the mysteries of these countries. In Africa, espe-
cially in those districts occupied by the Foulahs and the
Moors, religious hypocrisy in a stranger is the most
flagrant of outrages, and it were a hundred times better
to pass there for a Christian, than for a false Mahometan;
so that if my mode of travelling had its advantages, which
its success has proved, it was also attended with terrible
inconveniences. I carried always in my wallet a sen-
tence of death, and how often was that wallet necessarily
confided to the hands of enemies ! On my arrival in Paris,
the notes, written mostly in pencil, were found so faint
and so much effaced by time, my wanderings, and my
ill fortune, that it required all the tenacity and the scru-
pulous fidelity of my memory to restore and reproduce
them as the basis of my observations and the materials
of my narrative.
