very fine linen or silken web, but it is far closer in texture, and
has never been woven in any kind of loom at all like those employed in
any manufacture known to history or archaeology. The letters, or more
properly symbols, are minute, but executed with extraordinary
clearness. I should fancy that something more like a pencil than a
pen, but with a finer point than that of the finest pencil, was
employed in the writing. Contractions and combinations are not merely
frequent, but almost universal. There is scarcely an instance in which
five consecutive letters are separately written, and there is no
single line in which half a dozen contractions, often including from
four to ten letters, do not occur. The pages are of the size of an
ordinary duodecimo, but contain some fifty lines per page, and perhaps
one hundred and fifty letters in each line. What were probably the
first half dozen pages have been utterly destroyed, and the next half
dozen are so mashed, tattered, and defaced, that only a few sentences
here and there are legible. I have contrived, however, to combine
these into what I believe to be a substantially correct representation
of the author's meaning. The Latin is of a monastic--sometimes almost
canine--quality, with many words which are not Latin at all. For the
rest, though here and there pages are illegible, and though some
symbols, especially those representing numbers or chemical compounds,
are absolutely undecipherable, it has been possible to effect what I
hope will be found a clear and coherent translation. I have condensed
the narrative but have not altered or suppressed a line for fear of
offending those who must be unreasonable, indeed, if they lay the
offence to my charge.

One word more. It is possible, if not likely, that some of those
friends of the narrator, for whom the account was evidently written,
may still be living, and that these pages may meet their eyes. If so,