plan of discovery as much as the weak endeavours of a single person could, unprotected, forlorn, and alone, or at times associated to beggars and banditti, as they offered, I undertook this desperate journey, and did not turn an ell out of my proposed way till I had completed it: It was the first discovery attempted in Your Majesty's reign. From Egypt I penetrated into this country, through Arabia on one side, passing through melancholy and dreary deserts, ventilated with poisonous winds, and glowing with eternal sun-beams, whose names are as unknown in geography as are those of the antediluvian world. In the six years employed in this survey I described a circumference whose greater axis comprehended twenty-two degrees of the meridian, in which dreadful circle was contained all that is terrible to the feelings, prejudicial to the health, or fatal to the life of man.
In laying the account of these Travels at Your Majesty's feet, I humbly hope I have shewn to the world of what value the efforts of every individual of Your Majesty's subjects may be; that num-
