Third complete edition (the first under the present title) of a classic account of three voyages by the Scotsman William Lithgow (1582-1645?), mostly on foot, from Rome to Greece, Crete, Turkey, Cyprus, the Holy Land, Egypt and Malta, continental Europe and North Africa, and through the British Isles and the Iberian peninsula. He gives the earliest clear account of coffee drinking in Europe, describes Turkish baths and long Turkish tobacco pipes, pigeon post between Aleppo and Bagdad and the hatching of chicken eggs by artificial incubation.
The book went through more than a dozen editions in the course of two centuries. "He ... had a greater knowledge of the interior of the countries he visited than most travellers of this period. He provides interesting details of the society, men, and manners he observed" (Blackmer).
Some plates bound at wrong position. With an occasional small tear or hole; trimmed, occasionally shaving a running head; and with the frontispiece backed with later paper. A pioneering travel account, including detailed observations of life in the Ottoman Empire, Egypt and other parts of the Middle East. ESTC R28791; Howgego, to 1800, L134; Wing L2541; cf. Blackmer 1021 (1640 ed.); for Lithgow: DNB XXXIII, p. 361.