Our Artist in Cuba, Peru, Spain and Algiers Leaves from The Sketch-Book of a Traveller, 1864-1868

AN APOLOGY.

The Author of these unpretending little wayside sketches offers them to the Public with the hesitating diffidence of an Amateur. The publication a few years ago, of a portion of the drawings was attended with so flattering a reception, that a new edition being called for, it is believed a few more Leaves from the same vagabond sketch-book may not be intrusive.

The out-of-the-way sort of places in which the Author's steps have led him, must always present the most enticing subjects for a comic pencil; and although no attempt is here made to much more than hint at the oranges and volantes of Cuba, the earthquakes and buzzards of Peru, the donkeys and beggars of Spain, or the Arabs and dates of Algiers, yet sketches made upon the spot, with the crispy freshness of a first impression, cannot fail in suggesting at least a panoramic picture of such grotesque incidents as these strange Countries furnish.

The drawings are merely the chance results of leisure moments; and Our Artist, in essaying to convey a ray of information through the glasses of humor, has simply multiplied with printers' ink his pocket-book of sketches, which, although caricatures, are exaggerations of actual events, jotted down on the impulse of the moment, for the same sort of idle pastime as may possibly lead the reader to linger along its ephemeral pages.

NEW YORK, Christmas, 1877.