University of Virginia Library

The Specimen of our Eastern Travels, which we have already given
the publick in the Ruins of Palmyra, has met with such a favorable reception
as seems to call for the Sequel. . . .

Having observed that descriptions of ruins, without accurate drawings,
seldom preserve more of their subject than it's confusion, we shall, as in the
Ruins of Palmyra, refer our reader almost entirely to the plates; where his
information will be more full and circumstantial, as well as less tedious and
confused, than could be conveyed by the happiest precision of language. [P. 1]

We therefore set out for Balbec March 31st. [1751] and arrived at Ersale
in seven hours. The greatest part of this journey was across the barren ridge
of hills called Antilibanus. . . .

We could not avoid staying here all night; but, impatient to leave a place
of so much danger, we set out early the next morning, and in five hours and
a half arrived at Balbec. . . .

This city . . . is now commanded by a person . . . who . . . was
called Emir Hassein. [P. 3]

We had been advised to distrust the Emir. . . . New demands were
every day made, which for some time we thought it adviseable to satisfy; but
they were so frequently, and at last so insolently repeated, that it became necessary
to give a peremptory refusal. . . .

Frequent negociations produced by this quarrel . . . ended in an open
declaration, on his side, that we should be attacked and cut to pieces in our
way from Balbec. When he heard that those menaces had not the effect he
expected, and that we were prepared to set out with about twenty armed
servants, he sent us a civil message, desiring that we might interchange presents
and part friends, and allow his people to guard us as far as mount Libanus;
to which we agreed. Not long after this he was assassinated by an
emissary of that rebellious brother whom we have mentioned, and who succeeded
him in the government of Balbec. [P. 4]

Having now finished this Second Volume, I beg leave to separate myself
a moment from my fellow-traveller, to acknowledge, as editor of this work,
that I alone am accountable for the delay of it's publication.

When called from my country by other duties, my necessary absence
retarded, in some measure, it's progress. Mr. Dawkins, with the same generous
spirit, which had so indefatigably surmounted the various obstacles of our
voyage, continued carefully to protect the fruits of those labours which he had
so chearfully shared: he not only attended to the accuracy of the work, by
having finished drawings made under his own eye by our draughtsman, from
the sketches and measures he had taken on the spot, but had the engravings

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