BUCKINGHAM (James Silk).
Travels in Mesopotamia. Including a journey from Aleppo to Bagdad, by the route of Beer, Orfah, Diarbekr, Mardin, Mousul; with researches on the ruins of Nineveh, Babylon, and other ancient cities.
This is the third of Buckingham’s four Middle-Eastern travel accounts, here in the 8vo. version. Commenting on the paucity of information respecting Mesopotamia, he places his narrative at the end of a list of those written by Benjamin of Tudela, Rauwolff, Della Valle, Otter and Niebuhr. The author was unaccompanied by any servant or companion, at all times adopted native dress and manners during his travels. He writes in a lively and entertaining way.This work proved much less contentious than his first “Travels in Palestine” which had provoked a long and bitter argument with William Bankes. At the end of the above work Buckingham appended a long account of the final act of this seven year spat: his successful libel case against Bankes and John Murray, and the award of four hundred pounds damages.
