Our young traveller was not to be discouraged by this difficulty.

Instead of learning Arabic in Europe, he withdrew to a convent of Copts, until he had made himself master of an idiom that is spoken by so many nations of the East.

This resolution showed one of those undaunted spirits that remain unshaken amid the trials of life.
Although, like other travellers, he might have amused us with an account of his hardships and the perils surmounted by his courage, he overcame the temptation of interrupting his narrative by personal adventures.

He disdained the beaten track.

He does not tell us the road he took, the accidents he met with, or the impressions he received.