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,.......... 809

CHAPTER 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