The Land of Midian (Revisited) — Volume 1

CONTENTS

Gold shall be found, and found In a land that's not now known. MOTHER SHIPTON, A.D. 1448.

A few pages by way of Forespeache.
The plain unvarnished tale of the travel in Midian, undertaken by the second Expedition, which, like the first, owes all to the liberality and the foresight of his Highness Ismail I., Khediv of Egypt, forms the subject of these volumes. During the four months between December 19, 1877, and April 20, 1878, the officers employed covered some 2500 miles by sea and land, of which 600, not including by-paths, were mapped and planned; and we brought back details of an old-new land which the civilized world had clean forgotten.
The public will now understand that one and the same subject has not given rise to two books. I have to acknowledge with gratitude the many able and kindly notices by the Press of my first volume ( The Gold Mines of Midian, etc. Messrs. C. Kegan Paul & Co., 1878). But some reviewers succeeded in completely misunderstanding the drift of that avant courier. It was an introduction intended to serve as a base for the present more extensive work, and—foundations intended to bear weight must be solid. Its object was to place before the reader the broad outlines of a country whose name was known to every schoolboy, whilst it was a vox et praeterea nihil, even to the learned, before the spring of 1877. I had judged advisable to sketch, with the able assistance of learned friends, its history and geography; its ethnology and archaeology; its zoology and malacology; its botany and geology. The drift was to prepare those who take an interest in Arabia generally, and especially in wild mysterious Midian, for the present work, which, one foresaw, would be a tale of discovery and adventure. Thus readers of The Land of Midian (Revisited) may feel that they are not standing upon ground utterly unknown; and the second publication is shortened and lightened—perhaps the greatest advantage of all—by the prolegomena having been presented in the first.