I reached Palestine on the 8th of July, 1872, and from that date, until the 1st October, 1875, the work was pushed on with scarcely any interruption, except during my absence for four months in 1874, when I returned to England to recruit my health, which was seriously impaired by the hardships encountered in the Jordan Valley.
After the attack on the party at Safed in 1875, the work was suspended for a year. When I left Palestine four-fifths of the Survey was completed, and the remaining fifth was happily carried out during the year 1877 under the command of Lieutenant Kitchener, and the great map now extends over 6000 square miles, from Dan to Beersheba, and from Jordan to the Mediterranean Sea.
Palestine is thus brought home to England, and the student may travel, in his study, over its weary roads and rugged hills without an ache, and may ford its dangerous streams, and pass through its malarious plains without discomfort.
This work was thus carried out by a party never stronger than five in number as regards Europeans, and was completed in little over five years in the field. The account given of the country will, I hope, be more complete than anything of the kind yet attempted for any Eastern land.
The results of the Survey are published as follows: First, a map in twenty-six sheets to the scale of one inch to the statute mile. Secondly, a reduced map engraved on copper to the scale of 660 yards to the inch.
The one-inch sheets are each accompanied by a memoir containing all the information collected by the Survey Party. Section A gives a geographical and topographical account of the country included in the sheet. Section B is an archæological description of the ruined sites. Section C includes the ethnographical notes and the local traditions of the district. The text of this memoir, with exception of Sections A and B, for sheets 1, 2, 3, 4 and 6, has been my work, under the editorship of Mr. G. Grove and Colonel C. W. Wilson, R.E. The nomenclature of the Survey, including about 9000 Arabic names, has been arranged in indexes for each sheet, and edited by Professor E. H. Palmer. The memoir will contain information which I have at various times carefully abstracted from more than fifty standard works, including Egyptian, Samaritan, and Talmudic writings, the early Christian Itineraries, and the mediæval chronicles, besides the Bible narrative, and the works of Josephus and other classical authorities.