PREFACE. NOTHING that I can say here will blind the reader to the deficiency of these pages; they are in truth, as their title expresses, the recollections of a "Journal burnt," and I present here but an outline of what I have seen or heard during three years of my life; and if I am wanting in figures and statistics and anything of weight as regards the country written of, it is certainly because I recalled this Journal unexpectedly, and far from the scenes it once depicted. I may have remembered too little, but that is preferable to remembering too much. I have tried to confine myself to what is most pleasant, and it may be that a rambling truthful story is the best, if to make the work elaborate one must have recourse to fiction. It is right that a man should submit anything he |