Preface.

Summary

To the traveller who delights in tracing vestiges of Grecian art and civilization amidst modern barbarism and desolation, and who may thus at once illustrate history and collect valuable materials for the geographer and the artist—there is no country that now affords so fertile a field of discovery as Asia Minor. Unfortunately, there is no province of the Ottoman empire more difficult to explore in detail. In European Turkey, the effects of the Mahometan system are somewhat tempered by its proximity to civilised Europe, by its conscious weakness, and by the great excess of the Christian population over the Turkish : but the Turk of Asia Minor, although he may be convinced of the danger which threatens the whole Ottoman empire, from the change that has taken place in the relative power of the Musulman and Christian world, since his ancestors conquered the favoured regions of which their successors have so long been permitted to remain in the undisturbed abuse—derives, nevertheless, a strong feeling of confidence and security, from his being further removed from the Christian nations which he dreads; and sensible that European Turkey must be the first to fall before the conqueror, he feels no restraint in the indulgence of his hatred to the Christian name, beyond that which may arise from the dictates of his religion, or from the native hospitality of the people of the East.