PREFACE TO VOLUME THE FIRST.
A considerable part of the information contained in this volume was collected several years ago, and would have been made public then, but for prudential considerations touching the welfare of the Nestorians. The author regrets this delay the less, since circumstances have permitted him to revist the scene of his labours, and to add to the stock of information acquired during his former sojourn in the East. Yet, notwithstanding, it is with some diffidence that he now sends these pages to the press: they were written in Mosul and its vicinity, where he had no opportunity of submitting them to the revision of any learned friend; and, being himself prevented from returning to England for that purpose, they are sent to the publisher with all the inaccuracies of style arising from the author's limited attainments in this department of literature. He is fully alive to his own backwardness in this respect, and would, therefore, at the outset, candidly apprise his readers, that if they anticipate gratification from the language in which the following researches are narrated, they will most probably be disappointed. Imagery borrowed from fancy sometimes indeed endangers the truthfulness of description, and conveys a wrong impression of the things described; but, when legitimately used, heightens the interest of objects when seen without
