Chapter I: Preface

In the reviews of my "Travels in "Central Asia," which have issued from the European and American press, I have generally been reproached with scantiness of details and scrappiness of treatment;--in a word, with having said much less than I could have said about my journey from the Bosphorus to Samarkand,--so rich in varied adventures and experiences.

Now, I will not deny that such a charge has not been quite unfairly levelled against me.

While I was writing my memoirs, during the first three months of my stay in London, after my year-long wanderings in Asia, I had very great trouble in accustoming myself to the idea of being firmly settled down. I always kept fancying myself bound on the morrow to pack up and extend my travels with the caravan: hence my irresolution and hasty procedure. Moreover, I was quite a stranger in the domain of travelling, and deemed it my duty now to keep something back for mere decency; anon to leave out something else, as of inferior interest. Hence many an episode was left untouched, many a picture remained but a feeble sketch.

To make up for this defect--if sparingness in words be really a defect--I have written the following pages. They contain only supplementary papers, partly about my own adventures, partly on the manners and rare characteristics of the Central Asiatic peoples, linked together in no particular connection. It would naturally have been better to offer these pages in the place of the former volume; and yet the slightest notice of a country so little known to us as Turkestan, which political questions will soon bring into the front of passing questions, will always have its uses; and "meglio tardi che mai."

A. V.

PESTH,
_2nd December, 1867_.

CONTENTS.

PAGE

CHAPTER I.

Dervishes and Hadjis 1

CHAPTER II.

Recollections of my Dervish Life 22

CHAPTER III.

Amongst the Turkomans 44

CHAPTER IV.

The Caravan in the Desert 62

CHAPTER V.

The Tent and its Inhabitants 75

CHAPTER VI.

The Court of Khiva 87

CHAPTER VII.

Joy and Sorrow 98

CHAPTER VIII.

House, Food, and Dress 114

CHAPTER IX.

From Khiva to Kungrat and back 127

CHAPTER X.

My Tartar 150

CHAPTER XI.

The Round of Life in Bokhara 166

CHAPTER XII.

Bokhara, the Head Quarters of Mohamedanism 186

CHAPTER XIII.

The Slave Trade and Slave Life in Central Asia 205

CHAPTER XIV.

Productive Power of the Three Oasis-Countries of Turkestan 231

CHAPTER XV.

On the Ancient History of Bokhara 257

CHAPTER XVI.

Ethnographical Sketch of the Turanian and Iranian Races
of Central Asia 282

CHAPTER XVII.

Iranians 313

CHAPTER XVIII.

Literature in Central Asia 339

CHAPTER XIX.

Rivalry between Russia and England in Central Asia 379

SKETCHES OF CENTRAL ASIA.