A City in Ruins--Yakub Khan--Freezing Weather 275
A Meshed Crowd--An Unceremonious Visitor--A Welcome--A Meshed Monument--Persecution of Jews--The ÁrminiusVambéTomb of Firdusi 283
An Old Friend--Saddle _v._ Cushions--A Curious Phenomenon--Alone in the Desert--An Englishman--A Snug Berth--Confounding the Disturbers--Reputation without Foundation 297
The Discomforts of Civilization--Presented to the Shah--Persian Official Corruption--A Character--An Expensive Photographer 314
Sir Henry Rawlinson--Sir Roderick Murchison--Lord Strangford--A Lion in London--At Burlington House--The Sorrows of Authorship 330
The following pages contain a strictly personal narrative of my Travels and Adventures in Asia and in Europe. They make no pretence whatever to be a geographical and ethnological description of the actual Central Asia. Upon these points recent works have greatly added to the knowledge we possessed twenty years ago, when I performed my dangerous pilgrimage from Budapest to Samarkand. A _résumé_ of the various publications of Russian, English, French and German travellers in this region would have formed a separate book, but these have nothing to do with the variegated adventures of my own career, of which I here propose to give the first complete picture to the English reader.
In presenting this narrative of my adventures in Europe and in Asia to the juvenile reader in England, I must add a few remarks which have not been embodied in the autobiographical reminiscences of this book. I must, in the first place, state that the desire to see foreign countries awoke in me at the tender age of six years. Playing with my younger comrades on the green before our village, I tried, with a crutch under my left arm--for I was lame--to run races with more lissome lads. Remaining usually far behind my rivals, and being jeered at by my comrades for my failures, I would go crying to my dear mother and bitterly complain of the shame which had befallen me. She used with all maternal tenderness to console me, saying, "Never mind that, my dear. If you grow older and stronger, you will beat them all by force of perseverance. I am sure you will yet be far in advance of them all." With firm reliance on the words of my good mother, I did not henceforth care very much for the scoffing of my playmates; I looked forward with great impatience to the time when I should be _in advance of them all_. With similar encouragements I was spurred on to my elementary studies, and, seeing that by dint of exertion I became one of the most industrious of students, I was fully prepared for the same success in physical competitions. But, alas! here I was to a certain extent disappointed, for my quick motion was generally hindered by the crutch, which I still used at the age of ten, not so much from necessity as from having become too accustomed to it to walk without it, but which I intended to lay aside as soon as possible. It was one day, whilst visiting the tomb of my father in the cemetery, that I made up my mind to walk without that troublesome instrument under my arm. Having thrown away the crutch, I walked, or I should rather say, I jumped, upon one leg a few paces, in order to try locomotion without a wooden support. It was a hard, nay, an exhaustive work; and, as the village was nearly a quarter of an hour's journey from the cemetery, I began to despair, and jumped back to fetch again the despised support. Having taken it in hand and being ready to start again for home, I suddenly felt an extraordinary agitation awakening in my breast; a desire for immediate ease was fighting fiercely with determined resolution, and it was only upon my remembrance of the good advice of my mother that the latter got the upper hand. In order to avoid any future temptation, I broke the crutch asunder, and using one half of it as a walking stick, I returned home, of course with great fatigue and nearly bathed in perspiration.