TRANSLATOR'S PREFACE.

Ignatius Pallme, a Bohemian by birth, it would

appear, undertook the journey to Kordofan, on

commission, for a mercantile establishment at Cairo,

in the hope of discovering new channels of traffic

with Central Africa. In the pursuit of his object,

he sojourned longer in the country than any Euro-

pean before him ; the information he furnishes

respecting the present state of this province of

Egypt in particular, and of the Belled Soudan in

general, may, therefore, be considered the most

authentic in existence at the present time. That few

travellers have visited these countries, and subjected

the information they were enabled to collect to print,

may be deduced from the facts, that scarcely one-

half of the places mentioned in the work before us

are to be found on the most recent maps ; and that

in referring to the literature on these countries, for

making a comparison between Pallme's opinions