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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.

I relate this incident in order to prove to the young reader that a resolute will is able to accomplish even seemingly impossible things, and that, through persisting in our decisions, we nearly always reach the goal of our desires. With the motto, "Forwards and never backwards!" I, a lame man, destitute of all name, was able to see distant countries in Asia, and to visit such places and peoples as I was anxious to know from the time that I first read of them. For we Hungarians are, as you must know, Asiatics by descent; our ancestors came thousands of years ago from the East to the banks of the Danube, and it is very natural that with us a voyage to Asia is connected with a good deal of national piety.

To Englishmen travels in Asia have another kind of attraction. To one, that continent is the cradle of our holy religion, the ancient seat of civilization; to another, it is a region for adventure, or the far country where he may satisfy his curiosity by witnessing habits and customs so different from his own. To the vast majority of Englishmen Asia is a field for commercial and industrial enterprise, where a noble and grateful task awaits the European, and where a holy duty may be fulfilled.

Now I can assure my young friends in England that Asia is worth seeing and studying. There are many, many features in the character and the social life of the Asiatic which deserve our admiration, although there are also others which will rouse our compassion and instigate us more greatly to love our own country and to cling the more closely to our own religion and institutions. What will strike us most is the difference of opinion and of view we meet at every step in the interior life of the Asiatic. It is not only his physical appearance, his dress and language, his food and habitation, but also his manner of thinking, nay, his mode of walking sitting and lying, which will seem strange to our eyes, and offer to us a spectacle such as we are unaccustomed to in our European world. Of fine scenes, of queer looking towns, of wonderful buildings and old monuments I will not speak at all, but I will repeat what I said before: "A journey to Asia is quite worth the trouble involved in it."

It would be indeed unfair should I conceal from you the fact that travelling in the interior of Asia does not at all belong to the class of enterprises called pleasure trips or vacation tours; for it involves a good deal of trouble and fatigue, of privation and suffering. A man brought up under better circumstances and accustomed to lead a comfortable life must be prepared to nourish his body on the most incredible food, to front all inclemencies of weather, and, what is most difficult, to renounce his notions of cleanliness. Of course a European is only gradually trained for such an extraordinary life of hardships; it is only by getting gradually from bad to worse that we are able to withstand the most trying situations; and if, reading the following pages, you should be astonished at what I went through and what I had to suffer, please to note that in spite of the great poverty in which I spent my childhood my task would not have come to a successful end if my progress from Hungary to Central Asia had not taken place gradually and after a temporary sojourn in the countries I had to pass on my way. Well, the preparation was certainly lengthy and wearisome, but in spite of that preparatory school the whole undertaking was extremely hazardous, and my sufferings were really such as could hardly be described. The account, which you will read in the following pages and all that I have written, contains scarcely the half of the adventures I went through in Europe and in Asia, and ought to be taken only for the outlines of a career I intend to sketch, but will not publish in my lifetime.

I do not need to add that I do not repent at all of having spent the best portion of my life in visiting different Asiatic countries, and of having been an eye-witness of many strange and highly interesting customs and habits of men. The joy and in most satisfaction which I felt whilst looking on the scenes for which my earliest juvenile fancy longed, that same joy I derive now from the recollection of those bygone adventures, and I feel really happy in unfolding the delightful and variegated picture of my former life. Should my young readers in England find an enjoyment in these pages, and should I have succeeded in imparting to them any knowledge of the distant Asiatic world, I shall feel certainly the more happy; for, according to the Oriental, to receive is only a single pleasure, but to give is a twofold one.

ARMINIUS VAMBÉRY.

Budapest.