out to the weary wanderer an inn at which "he might take his ease." Where this author was born, or from what parents, we know not: the first information that we receive of him being that at nine years of age he went to sea, and at ten was taken a prisoner of war, (in 1796,) and carried into Corunna; having been set afloat thus early, to gratify an almost innate passion for visiting distant countries. This desire seems never to have wanted fuel to support it: for the gratification of it, instead of exhausting the flame, constantly added to its strength. A journey through the finest parts of Spain and Portugal, and a series of voyages to America, the Bahama islands, and the West Indies, were a sort of prelude to his excursions in countries where more was to be gleaned by the curious traveller. Having been hurried with him up the Mediterranean with the rapidity of lightning, we ascend the Nile at similar speed, and pass the Nubian frontier to view some of its stupendous remains of antiquity. Sufferings from robbery, perils by sea, and disappointments in the Quixotic attempt of teaching mechanics to the Turks, (or at least of being allowed to apply such powers for them,) filled up the author's time till he arrived at Mecca in his way to India. On a subsequent return thence to Egypt, he was much occupied in surveying the Red Sea; and, on his arrival at Cairo, he entered into an engagement to return again to India as diplomatic agent for a commercial treaty. From this period, the travels contained in the body of this volume commenced; and, as it will be wholly impossible for us to follow the author through the whole course of them, it may not be amiss to quote his own general outline of the journey, lest our silence on very many parts of it might lead our readers to under-calculate its extent. In the course of this journey, I saw the greater part of Palestine, and the country beyond the Jordan; traversed the eastern parts of Moab, Bashan Gilead, and the Auranites; crossed Phonicia and the higher parts of Syria, in various directions from Baalbek by the snowy and cedar-crowned summits of Lebanon to the sea-coast, and from Antioch, by the ever-verdant banks of the Orontes, to Aleppo. I journeyed through Mesopotamia, by Ur of. the Chaldees, to Nineveh and Babylon; and visited the great living cities of Diarbekr, Mosul, and Baghdad in the way. I went from Ctesiphon and Seleucia by Dastagherd on the plains, and the pass of Zagras, through the mountains into Persia; and visited Ecbatana, Persepolis, and Shapoor, among the ancient, with Kermanshah, Hamadan, Isfahaun, and Shiraz, among the modern cities of Iran. This journey of twelve long months was protracted by dangers and obstacles, which no one had foreseen, and rendered tedious by repeated illness, arising from sufferings and privations in the way. My recovery from these, I owed, in one instance, to the hospitable atten attentions I received in the convent of Mar Elias, from the hands of the amiable Lady Hester Stanhope, a name that deserves to be immortalized, if talents and virtues of the highest order give claim to immortality; and, in another, to the friendly offices of Mr. and Mrs. Rich, in the bosom of whose family at Baghdad, I found all the consolations which benevolence and sympathy could bestow, and all the pleasures that learning, accomplishments, and refined taste could yield. When this long journey terminated at last, by returning me again to the society of my friends in India, it was the warm and incessant request of all who knew any thing of my labours that I would bring them before the public eye.' Of that portion of Mr. Buckingham's life which preceded this journey, it is impossible for us to say how much was consumed in actual travelling; for, though we have named some of the countries that he visited, we have no clue to the several periods at which he perforined such journies, or to the length of time which they required. His occasional meetings with the lamented Burckhardt at one or two points give some accidental hints of this nature, but not sufficient to guide us. We should have been glad to have our curiosity on this head gratified, from a regard to the extent of the author's studies, for they have been undoubtedly both extensive and laborious; and either his mental digestion has been very rapid, or he must have had very considerable intervals from his more active pursuits, of which the hurry and consequent confusion of his preface gives us no account. The journal is written, with very little exception, in the style of plain unaffected narrative; and the author appears to have consulted such antient works, scriptural and profane, as have either professedly or incidentally treated of the Holy Land, or any particular part of it: thus comparing modern appearances with former descriptions, and attempting by the same authority to establish or confute the authenticity of sites of towns, and other scenes of action. He has also referred to the narratives of many of his modern predecessors in the same route; under which genus we mean to speak of the two classes-the old moderns, and the new moderns: among the former of whom Maundrell and Pococke, and among the latter Clarke and Chateaubriand, have been most in his hands, and their opinions consequently are occasionally discussed. When we have stated that Mr. Buckingham appears to have had a competent knowlege of Arabic, as also much familiarity with oriental customs generally, and that on quitting Jerusalem he journeyed in the Arab dress in company with Mr. Bankes, (who is too well known as a traveller to require more than the mention of his name,) we may proceed to the material contents of the volume; without, we hope, being ac Q 2 cused cused of having neglected to give a general character of it, or of having left our readers without some kind of introduction to the author. On Christmas-day, 1815, Mr. Buckingham embarked at Alexandria for Palestine. In reviewing the coast of Egypt from many points of direction, for which much opportunity was afforded by baffling winds, the author considered its appearance as unfavorable to the idea of the Delta being the gift of the Nile; in which opinion he is supported by several modern travellers, with some of whom we have conversed on the subject; and he observes that, whatever changes may have taken place at the apex of the island,' (where most, we believe, who hold a contrary opinion have formed it,) by the alluvium of the river, its base being composed of sandhills and salt-lakes extending many leagues in shore, betrays the strongest symptoms of its being entirely gained from the sea, and the river never having reached it to leave any of its deposit there." It was not till the 6th of January that Mr. B. landed at Soor, the antient Tyre; which is described as now situated at the extremity of a sandy peninsula, extending out to the north-west for about a mile from the line of the main coast, and much wider towards its outer point than near to its junction with the continent. The natural appearance of the place immediately corroborates the antient accounts of the island on which, at one period of history at least, the city stood; and, amid all its changes, the place has retained or recovered its oldest appellation of Soor or Tsoor, in which Sandys discovered the etymology of Syria, and which Calmet explains to signify a rock. Mr. B. tells us that at the present time it contains about eight hundred substantial stonebuilt dwellings, mostly having courts, wells, and other conveniences attached to them; besides smaller habitations for the poor. Within the walls are one mosque, three Christian churches, a bath, and three bazars; and the inhabitants are stated to be from five to eight thousand. Now, although this account by no means affords a very splendid view of the modern state of a city still more remarkable in Holy Writ than in classic history, it conveys a much more favorable idea than that which we lately received from Mr. Jolliffe, the last traveller in Syria, of whose work we have twice spoken. That gentleman speaks of miserable cabins, built in irregular lines, undeservedly called Streets, together with a few better houses occupied by the public authorities, as composing all the We can scarcely name a greater fault in travellers than vague and indefinite description: that object which is handsome in the eyes of one man is mean in those of another; town. that that which is dreary and comfortless, to a person accustomed with little interruption to European conveniences, will possibly be a welcome and no contemptible accommodation in the opinion of another, who has for a long time foregone such comforts; and thus the reader is either left in a state of unsatisfied curiosity, or perhaps is misled from not knowing the personal character and history of the traveller whose work he reads. In this case, both writers may give a true relation of the impression which they received from the same object, and yet may differ widely. As Mr. Buckingham, however, in the present instance, is far more precise in his description than Mr. Jolliffe, he may seem to be the better authority yet it should be added that both Maundrell and Bruce, when they respectively visited Tyre, gave a more unfavorable representation of the place than even that of Mr. Jolliffe. It is generally allowed that considerable difficulty arises in determining whether the most antient Tyre, for it was a city which rose more than once, was built on the continent or on an island. In those splendid and poetical prophecies which we read in the Scriptures respecting its destined ruin *, many expressions support the latter belief; and yet in so figurative a strain are they written, that they may on the other hand be esteemed as only allegorical representations of the great naval power of the city. If we look to classical authority, the testimony is not much more clear; and indeed it would be less so, but for the difference between writings historical and descriptive on the one hand, and poetical embellishment on the other. Herodotus leads us to infer that Tyre was on the continent:- Diodorus speaks of a double city, one on the continent, and the other on an island, existing at the same time, the former of which was most antient; and Strabo mentions only insular Tyre. Nevertheless, these testimonies, sacred and profane, however they may appear to conflict, lead to a tolerably certain conclusion of the existence of two cities, divided by the small strait of the sea; and the question is thus resolved into a matter of simple chronology, as to the prior existence of the continental or the insular city: in which way many learned men have treated it. It appears to us, agreeably to Whiston's opinion in his notes to Josephus, that the Palæ Tyrus, or oldest Tyre, as * Isa. xxxiii. 2. 6, 7. Jer. xlvii. Ezek. xxvi. xxvii. xxviii. + Ezek. xxvii. 6. "The great wind hath broken thee in the middle of the sea :" on which Bp. Warburton justly observes, that "here the city is spoken of under the figure of a ship." Q 3 existing existing at the division of the promised land by Joshua about A. C. 1450, was seated on the continent: but, having granted this, instead of following the same writer in his subsequent views of the case, we would more willingly take Bishop Newton on Ezekiel, xxvi. for our guide in what follows *: "It hath been questioned among learned men which of the Tyres was the subject of these prophecies, whether Old Tyre which was situated on the continent, or New Tyre, that was built on an island almost over against it. The truest and best answer I conceive to be, that the prophecies appertain to both, some expressions being applicable only to the former, and others only to the latter. From these passages it appears, that the insular Tyre, and that on the continent, are both included in these prophecies, are both comprehended under the same name, and both spoken of as one and the same city, part built on a continent, part on an island adjoining. It is commonly said, indeed, that when Old Tyre was closely besieged by the Chaldeans, and was near falling into their hands, that the Tyrians then fled from thence, and built New Tyre in the island: but the learned Vitringa hath proved, that New Tyre was founded many ages before, was a station for ships, and considered part of Old Tyre." If we place Herodotus at somewhat less than a century and a half from the capture of Tyre by Nebuchadnezzar, we find no difficulty in supposing that the part of the city which had been the most antient, viz. that which stood on the continent, might have risen again to some degree of importance in his time as a sort of suburb to that which stood on the island; for it is clear that, when Alexander besieged this same town about another century later still, not only the insular Tyre was the great place, but there was a portion of the city, or another town, as persons may please to call it, divided from it by the strait, which he subsequently turned into the " suppositumque rotis solidum mare."— If, however, the opinion of Bishop Newton be just, we see nothing in the passage in which Herodotus speaks of Tyre (Euterpe 44.) that would induce us to suppose that he alluded to the continent more than to an island. The stories which the priests told him of the antiquity of their temple were evidently most extravagant fictions, either of their own invention or partially believed by them from tradition. Now the antiquity of these sacred buildings is the only ground for the presumption that they stood on the main-land; and we know that there was a Tyre or a part of Tyre on the island when Isaiah wrote, (the first who *Cited also by D'Oyly and Mant. + Compare Ezek. xxvii. 3. with ver. 4-25.; xxvi. 7. with Isa. xxiii. 2. 4. 6.; and Ezek. xxvi. 10. with ver. 12. and xxviii. 8. |