Around the World on a Bicycle - Volume II - From Teheran To Yokohama

astlu - Thomas Stevens

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191 pages

English

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Publié par	astlu
Publié le	08 décembre 2010
Nombre de lectures	65
Langue	English

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The Project Gutenberg EBook of Around the World on a Bicycle Volume II. by Thomas Stevens This eBook is for the use of anyone anywhere at no cost and with almost no restrictions whatsoever. You may copy it, give it away or re-use it under the terms of the Project Gutenberg License included with this eBook or online at www.gutenberg.net Title: Around the World on a Bicycle Volume II. From Teheran To Yokohama Author: Thomas Stevens Release Date: October 14, 2004 [EBook #13749] Language: English *** START OF THIS PROJECT GUTENBERG EBOOK BICYCLE VOLUME II. *** Produced by Ray Schumacher AROUND THE WORLD ON A BICYCLE Volume II. From Teheran To Yokohama By Thomas Stevens CONTENTS. CHAPTER I. PAGE THE START FROM TEHERAN, …….. 1 CHAPTER II. PERSIA AND THE MESHED PILGRIM ROAD, …… 34 CHAPTER III. PERSIA AND THE MESHED PILGRIM ROAD,…… 43 CHAPTER IV. THROUGH KHORASSAN,………. 65 CHAPTER V. MESHED THE HOLY,………. 84 CHAPTER VI. THE UNBEATEN TRACKS Of KHORASSAN,…… 109 CHAPTER VII. BEERJAND AND THE FRONTIER OF AFGHANISTAN, .. .. 135 CHAPTER VIII ACROSS THE "DESERT OF DESPAIR,"……. 160 CHAPTER IX. AFGHANISTAN,………… 181 CHAPTER X. ARRESTED AT FURRAH,……… 197 CHAPTER XI. UNDER ESCORT TO HERAT,……… 209 CHAPTER XII. TAKEN BACK TO PERSIA,……… 230 CHAPTER XIII. ROUNDABOUT TO INDIA,…… 255 CHAPTER XIV. THROUGH INDIA,……….. 284 CHAPTER XV. DELHI AND AGRA,………. 809CHAPTER XVI. FROM AGRA TO SINGAPORE,…….. 833 CHAPTER XVII. THROUGH CHINA,……….. 365 CHAPTER XVIII. DOWN THE KAN-KIANG VALLEY,…….. 400 CHAPTER XIX. THROUGH JAPAN,………… 432 CHAPTER XX. THE HOME STRETCH,………. 451 CAMBRIDGE, MASS., April 10, 1887. FROM TEHERAN TO YOKOHAMA.CHAPTER I. THE START FROM TEHERAN. The season of 1885-86 has been an exceptionally mild winter in the Persian capital. Up to Christmas the weather was clear and bracing, sufficiently cool to be comfortable in the daytime, and with crisp, frosty weather at night. The first snow of the season commenced falling while a portion of the English colony were enjoying a characteristic Christmas dinner of roast-beef and plum-pudding, at the house of the superintendent of the Indo-European Telegraph Station, and during January and February, snow-storms, cold and drizzling rains alternated with brief periods of clearer weather. When the sun shines from a cloudless sky in Teheran, its rays are sometimes uncomfortably warm, even in midwinter; a foot of snow may have clothed the city and the surrounding plain in a soft, white mantle during the night, but, asserting his supremacy on the following morning, he will unveil the gray nakedness of the stony plain again by noon. The steadily retreating snow line will be driven back-back over the undulating foot-hills, and some little distance up the rugged slopes of the Elburz range, hard by, ere he retires from view in the evening, rotund and fiery. This irregular snow-line has been steadily losing ground, and retreating higher and higher up the mountain-slopes during the latter half of February, and when March is ushered in, with clear sunny weather, and the mud begins drying up and the various indications of spring begin to put in their appearance, I decide to make a start. Friends residing here who have been mentioning April 15th as the date I should be justified in thinking the unsettled weather at an end and pulling out eastward again, agree, in response to my anxious inquiries, that it is an open spell of weather before the regular spring rains, that may possibly last until I reach Meshed. During the winter I have examined, as far as circumstances have permitted, the merits and demerits of the different routes to the Pacific Coast, and have decided upon going through Turkestan and Southern Siberia to the Amoor Valley, and thence either follow down the valley to Vladivostok or strike across Mongolia to Pekin—the latter route by preference, if upon reaching Irkutsk I find it to be practicable; if not practicable, then the Amoor Valley route from necessity. This route I approve of, as it will not only take me through some of the most interesting country in Asia, but will probably be a more straightaway continuous land-journey than any other. The distance from Teheran to Vladivostok is some six thousand miles, and, well aware that six thousand miles with a bicycle over Asiatic roads is a task of no little magnitude, I at once determine upon taking advantage of the fair March weather to accomplish at least the first six hundred miles of the journey between Teheran and Meshed, one of the holy cities of Persia. The bicycle is in good trim, my own health is splendid, my experience of nearly eight thousand miles of straightaway wheeling over the roads of three continents ought to count for something, and it is with every confidence of accomplishing my undertaking without serious misadventure that I set about making my final preparations to start. The British Charge d'Affaires gives me a letter to General Melnikoff, the Russian Minister at the Shah's court, explaining the nature and object of my journey, and asking him to render me whatever assistance he can to get through, for most of the proposed route lies through Russian territory. Among my Teheran friends is Mr. M———, a lively, dapper little telegraphist, who knows three or four different languages, and who never seems happier than when called upon to act the part of interpreter for friends about him. Among other distinguishing qualities, Mr. M———shines in Teheran society as the only Briton with sufficient courage to wear a chimney-pot hat. Although the writer has seen the "stove-pipe" of the unsuspecting tenderfoot from the Eastern States made short work of in a far Western town, and the occurrence seemed scarcely to be out of place there, I little expected to find popular sentiment running in the same warlike groove, and asserting itself in the same destructive manner in the little English community at Teheran. Such, however, is the grim fact, and I have ventured to think that after this there is no disputing the common destiny of us Anglo-Saxons, whatever clime, country, or government may at present claim us as its own. Having seen this unfortunate headgear of our venerable and venerated forefathers shot as full of holes as a colander in the West, I come to the East only to find it subjected to similar indignities here. I happen to be present at the wanton destruction of Mr. M———'s second or third importation from England, see it taken ruthlessly from his head, thrust through and through with a sword-stick, and then made to play the unhappy and undignified part of a football so long as there is anything left to kick at. More than our common language, methinks—more than common customs and traditions—more than all those characteristic traits that distinguish us in common, and at the same time also distinguish us from all other peoples—more than anything else, does this mutual spirit of destructiveness, called into play by the sight of a stove-pipe hat, prove the existence of a strong, resistless undercurrent of sympathy that is carrying the most distant outposts of Anglo-Saxony merrily down the stream of time together, to some particular end; perchance a glorious