2
TRAVELS AND DISCOVERIES
more united and harmonious composition could have been produced by recasting the whole of the original letters into one continuous narrative, than by such an amalgamation as I have attempted; but the record of a traveller's first impressions, in their original freshness, will, in most cases, interest the public more than any subsequent composition which may be distilled, in the laboratory of his memory, out of confused and faded images.
In the series of Letters I have inserted several from my friend Mr. Dominic Ellis Colnaghi, now H.M. Consul at Bastia, who left England with me in 1852, and of whose companionship and assistance I had the advantage during the greater part of my sojourn in the Levant.
