The
Travellers To Whom Ayd Alluded Were M. Seetzen, Who Visited Mount Sinai
Eight Years Since, And M. Agnelli, Who Ten Years Ago Travelled For The
Emperor Of Austria, Collecting Specimens
[P.520] of natural history, and who made some stay at Tor, from whence
he sent Arabs to hunt for all kinds of animals.
M. Seetzen traversed the peninsula in several directions, and followed a
part of the eastern gulf as far northward, I believe, as Noweyba. This
learned and indefatigable traveller made it a rule not to be intimidated
by the suspicions and prejudices of the Bedouins; beyond the Jordan, on
the shores of the Dead sea, in the desert of Tyh, in this peninsula, as
well as in Arabia, he openly followed his pursuits, never attempting to
hide his papers and pencils from the natives, but avowing his object to
be that of collecting precious herbs and curious stones, in the
character of a Christian physician in the Holy Land, and in that of a
Moslim physician in the Hedjaz. If the knowledge of the natural history
of Syria and Arabia was the principal object of M. Seetzen’s researches,
he was perfectly right in the course which he adopted, but if he
considered these countries only as intermediate steps towards the
exploring of others, he placed his ultimate success in the utmost peril;
and though he may have succeeded in elucidating the history of the brute
creation, he had little chance of obtaining much information on the
human character, which can only be done by gaining the confidence of the
inhabitants, and by accommodating our notions, views, and manners, to
their own.
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