If what has been to me so great a labour of love shall have the effect of adding one leaf to the well-earned laurel-wreath of my favourite hero, I shall be amply repaid. My work has had no other object, although I have thought it advisable to combine the result of my own journeys with his, and thus to give the subject a wider interest, and make it useful for travellers in little-known parts of Algeria and Tunis.
However badly my share of the work may be performed, Bruce’s merits can hardly fail to ensure its success. Never was a trite old saying more aptly applied than that adopted by his biographer, and which I have engraved on his monument at Algiers: ‘Magna est veritas et prævalebit.’
FOOTNOTES:
[1]This instrument still exists at Kinnaird.
[2]In searching for Bruce’s Barbary drawings in Her Majesty’s Library at Windsor Castle, eighteen drawings of Palmyra and Baalbec were discovered; they bore no names or signature, and the authorship was unknown to the librarian until I identified them.
[3]Zaghouan.
[4]This is evidently a clerical error; there is no good arch at Ain Tunga. Bruce probably means Zanfour.
[5]Tebessa.
[6]The Prætorium of Lambessa.
[7]This does not exist in the Kinnaird collection.