The first Edition of the 'Art of Travel' was published in 1854: it was far less comprehensive than the later ones; for my materials steadily accumulate, and each successive Edition has shown a marked improvement on its predecessor. Hitherto I have adhered to the original arrangement of the work, but am now obliged to deviate from it, for the contents have outgrown the system of classification I first adopted. Before I could interpolate the new matter prepared for this Edition, I found it necessary to recast the last one, by cutting it into pieces, sorting it into fresh paragraphs and thoroughly revising the writing--disentangling here and consolidating there. The present Edition will consequently be found more conveniently arranged than those that preceded it, and, at the same time, I trust the copiousness of its Index will enable persons to find with readiness any passage they had remarked in a former Edition, and to which they may desire again to refer.
I am still most thankful to strangers as well as to friends for contributions of hints or corrections, having been indebted to many a previously unknown correspondent for valuable information. I beg that such communications may be addressed to me, care of my publisher, Mr. Murray, 50, Albermarle Street, London.
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P.S.--A reviewer of my Third Edition accused me of copying largely from an American book, called 'The Prairie Traveller,' by, the then, Capt. Randolph B. Marcy. I therefore think it well to remark that the first Edition of that work was published in 1859 (Harper and Brothers, New York;--by authority of the American War Department), and that the passages in question are all taken from my second Edition published in 1856; part of them are copies of what I had myself written, the rest are reprints of my quotations, as though the Author of the 'Prairie Traveller' had himself originally selected them.
I take this opportunity of remarking that though I have been indebted for information to a very large number of authors and correspondents, yet I am sorry to be unable to make my acknowledgements except in comparatively few instances. The fact is that the passages in this book are seldom traceable to distinctly definite sources: commonly more than one person giving me information that partially covers the same subject, and not unfrequently my own subsequent enquiries modifying or enlarging the hints I had received. Consequently I have given the names of authorities only when my information has been wholly due to them, or when their descriptions are so graphic that I have transferred them without alteration into my pages, or else when their statements require confirmation. It will be easy to see by the context to which of these categories each quotation belongs.
Francis Galton