Southern Arabia

Lafayette, photo.——Walker & Boutall ph. sc.
Signature: Theodore Bent
London. Published by Smith, Elder & Co. 15, Waterloo Place.



If my fellow-traveller had lived, he intended to have put together in book form such information as we had gathered about Southern Arabia. Now, as he died four days after our return from our last journey there, I have had to undertake the task myself. It has been very sad to me, but I have been helped by knowing that, however imperfect this book may be, what is written here will surely be a help to those who, by following in our footsteps, will be able to get beyond them, and to whom I so heartily wish success and a Happy Home-coming, the best wish a traveller may have. It is for their information that I have included so many things about the price of camels, the payment of soldiers and so forth, and yet even casual readers may care to know these details of explorers' daily lives.
Much that is set down here has been published before, but a good deal is new.
My husband had written several articles in the Nineteenth Century , and by the kindness of the editor I have been able to make use of these; also I have incorporated the lectures he had given before the Royal Geographical Society and the British Association. The rest is from his note-books and from the 'Chronicles' that I always wrote during our journeys.
I thought at first of trying to keep our several writings apart; but, to avoid confusion of inverted commas, I decided, acting on advice, just to put the whole thing into as consecutive a form as possible, only saying that the least part of the writing is mine.