Volume I covers this journey up to Mt. Sinai. "These volumes are amongst the most agreeable of travels that we have ever read; nor is it possible to arrive at their conclusion without desiring that another such pair by the same hand were within reach for instant consultation." --The Monthly Review The volumes are almost exclusively occupied with personal narrative. They tell what the author himself saw and heard and felt; they go into no learned or fanciful disquisitions; they pretend to add little to the store of what is already familiarly known. But they give the adventures and observations of an enterprising and spirited man in a manner adapted to excite the liveliest interest, and to bring before the mind an unusually strong persuasion of the reality of the things witnessed, and the places and persons described. The vivacity of the narrator makes us feel, after reading the book, as if we had actually been with him on the route. We seem to have shared his lazy enjoyment on the Nile, where he lolled along in his boat without dressing or shaving, and strolled leisurely on shore among the mummy pits and pyramids. We can hardly believe that we were not with him in his adventurous scrambling up and down Mount Hor, and his strange quarrels and still stranger reconciliations with his Bedouin guides. John Lloyd Stephens (1805 – 1852) was an American explorer, writer, and diplomat. Stephens embarked on a journey through Europe in 1834, and went on to Egypt and the Levant, returning home in 1836. He later wrote several popular books about his travels and explorations.