Note 1 — Preface.

As differences will be found to occur in the names of places, &c. between the parts thus added and the remainder of the book, it may be well to explain that in the former only are they spelt according to the usually received method of rendering words of Eastern origin in the Roman character. By this system the letters ā, e, ī, o, and ū, are given the sounds of the corresponding Italian vowels; i and u are pronounced as in “hit” and “put;” and the letter a is made to represent the short u in the word “cut.” In this way it is that Cashmere, correctly pronounced Cushmere, comes to be written Kashmīr, and Mutun, pronounced as the English word “mutton,”1 is written Matan, both of which, to the initiated, represent the true sound of the words. Those who have adopted the system, however, have not always employed it throughout, nor given with it the key by which it alone becomes intelligible; and the result has been that in many ways, but principally from the un-English use made of the letter a, it has tended quite as much to mislead and confuse, as to direct.