Mr. Ray's travels, Vol. 2
This second volume follows a sixteenth-century naturalist's overland journey from Augsburg to the Levant and deep into the Near East. Setting out by sea to Tripoli in Syria, the traveler presses on through Aleppo, down the Euphrates past the ruins of Old Babylon to Baghdad, and back through Assyria, Nineveh, and Mesopotamia before turning south to Jerusalem and its holy places. Along the way he records the cities, trades, baths, and customs of the Turks, Arabs, and various Christian sects, the perils of robbers and customs officers, and the plants he gathered and pressed carefully onto paper.
Part travel diary, part early botanical survey, the work matters as a firsthand European account of the Ottoman world and the biblical landscape. Its careful attention to commerce, religion, hardship, and natural history makes it a vivid window onto a region few of the author's countrymen had seen.
How it begins
Chap. I. Which way I went first of all, from Augspurg to Marseilles , and from thence shipped over the Seas towards Tripoli of Syria , situated in Phœnecia . pag. 1 Chap. II. Of the famous city of Tripoli , of it’s fruitful neighbourhood and great trade; and also of the splendid baths, and other magnificent buildings to be seen there. Their ways of making Rusma, Pot-ashes, Soap, &c. p. 14 Chap. III. Of the Turks of high and low conditions, men and women; of their employments, offices, manners, customs, cloaths, as much as I could at Tripoli (during my abode) understand, see, and learn thereof. p. 26 Chap. IV. A description of the plants I gathered at Tripoli . p. 35 Chap. V. Which way I travell’d from Tripoli farther to the two famous cities of Damant and Aleppo . p. 42 Chap. VI. Of the situation of the potent city of Aleppo ; of the buildings thereof, and also of the delicate fruits and fine plants, that grow there, within and without gardens. p. 45 Chap. VII. Of the high places and authority of Bashaws, what great courts they keep, and how they administer their offices; as also of their way of living, of their privileges, of their manners and conversation. p. 51 Chap. VIII.
Text from Project Gutenberg, public domain.