LIST OF ILLUSTRATIONS.

PAGE
PORTRAIT OF THE AUTHOR[Frontispiece]
PRESSBURG[3]
PESTH—THE STARTING PLACE[11]
GALACZ[17]
THE BOSPHORUS[23]
MOUNT ARARAT[57]
CITY OF TEBRIZ[65]
TRAVELLING IN PERSIA[97]
TAKH-TA-RA-WAN[127]
MAKING FRIENDS WITH THE TARTARS[151]
A DERVISH FEAST[163]
A LIGHT FOR THE COMPASS[197]
THE KARENDAG HILLS[201]
A WELL IN THE DESERT[209]
AN ASININE ARMY[215]
AUDIENCE WITH THE KHAN OF KHIVA[223]
ROAD IN CENTRAL ASIA[229]
SAMARKAND[255]

PREFATORY NOTE
TO
FIRST EDITION.

The following pages contain a strictly personal narrative of my Travels and Adventures in Asia and in Europe. They make no pretence whatever to be a geographical and ethnological description of the actual Central Asia. Upon these points recent works have greatly added to the knowledge we possessed twenty years ago, when I performed my dangerous pilgrimage from Budapest to Samarkand. A résumé of the various publications of Russian, English, French and German travellers in this region would have formed a separate book, but these have nothing to do with the variegated adventures of my own career, of which I here propose to give the first complete picture to the English reader.

ARMINIUS VAMBÉRY.

Budapest.