Description
Across Asia on a Bicycle
I
BEYOND THE BOSPORUS
On a morning early in April the little steamer conveying us across from
Stamboul touched the wharf at Haider Pasha. Amid the rabble of Greeks,
Armenians, Turks, and Italians we trundled our bicycles across the
gang-plank, which for us was the threshold of Asia, the beginning of an
inland journey of seven thousand miles from the Bosporus to the Pacific.
Through the morning fog which enveloped the shipping in the Golden Horn,
the “stars and stripes” at a single masthead were waving farewell to two
American students fresh from college who had nerved themselves for nearly
two years of separation from the comforts of western civilization.
Our guide to the road to Ismid was the little twelve-year-old son of an
Armenian doctor, whose guests we had been during our sojourn in Stamboul.
He trotted for some distance by our side, and then, pressing our hands in
both of his, he said with childlike sincerity: “I hope God will take care
of you”; for he was possessed with the thought popular among Armenians, of
pillages and massacres by marauding brigands.
The idea of a trip around the world had been conceived by us as a
practical finish to a theoretical education; and the bicycle feature was
adopted merely as a means to that end. On reaching London we had formed
the plan of penetrating the heart of the Asiatic continent, instead of
skirting its more civilized coast-line. For a passport and other
credentials necessary in journeying through Russia and Central Asia we had
been advised to make application to the Czar’s representative on our
arrival at Teheran, as we would enter the Russian dominions from Persia;
and to that end the Russian minister in London had provided us with a
letter of i
Product ID: 9781776807802
Sku: 9781776807802
