Academia Scientiarum Hungarica sub Auspiciis Potentissimi et Inclitissimi Principis Francisci Josephi II. Austriae Imperatoris et Hungariae Regis vigens.
Socius noster Vir ingenuus honestissimusque Arminius Vambéry Hungarus eo fine per nos ad oras Asiae Tartaricas mittitur; ut ibidem studio et disquisitioni linguae et dialectorum Turcico-Tartaricarum incumbat et sic nova perscrutandae linguae nostrae popularis Hungaricae, familiae altaicae cognatae adminicula scientifica procuret.
Omnes igitur Viros Illustres, qui literas has nostras viderint, quive, vel Rei Publicae administrandae in Imperiis Summorum Principum Turciae et Persarum praesunt, vel Legationibus Principum Europaeorum funguntur, aut secus amore literarum tenentur, rogamus obtestamurque, ut eidem Socio nostro Arminio Vambéry in rebus quibuscunque, quae ad promovendum eius scopum literarum pertinent, gratiose opitulari eumque benevola protectione sua fulcire velint.
Datae Pestini in Hungarica, die 1 Augusti anno mdccclxi.
BARO JOSEPHUS EÖTVÖS (_Acad. Sci. Hung. V. Praeses_). DR. FRANCISCUS TOLDY, (_Acad. Sci. Hung. Secretarius perpetuus_)."
The good gentlemen at home hoped that I should find this letter of commendation useful with the Khans in Turkestan and the Turkoman chiefs. It would have meant at least the gallows or the executioner's sword if I had shown this infidel writing either in the Steppe or on the Oxus!
Full of glorious expectations, I left Pest in 1861 to go to Constantinople for the second time. There I wanted to make the necessary preparations to enable me to start in the early spring on my wanderings through Asia Minor and Persia. The rate of exchange being so preposterously high, the thousand florins in Austrian bank-notes had dwindled down to seven hundred, and a stay of several more months in Constantinople further reduced my little stock of ready money. When in March, 1862, I went on board the Lloyd steamer _Progresso_ to Trebizond, the girdle which I wore next to my skin contained only enough to take me as far as Teheran. Truly a risky undertaking, perhaps a mad trick, the danger of which I hardly realised just then. It was somewhat hard to part with all my kind Turkish friends in Stambul. These noble people did all they could to help me, and to postpone my certain destruction, as they thought, as long as possible. They advised me to go for the present only to Persia; and as the plenipotentiary and Turkish ambassador at the court of Teheran was at that time Haidar Effendi, an intimate friend of my patron, Reouf Bey, I received, besides the official commendation of Ali Pasha, also a collective letter from several distinguished officials of the Porte, in which they commended me, the poor demented one, to his kind care. Of my European descent, of the aim and object of my journey, not one word. I had to be Reshid Effendi only, and comport myself so as to tally exactly with my letter of introduction. I durst not do anything else, for it was imperative that I should pass for a real Turk, an Effendi from Constantinople.