With these and similar feelings I spent my first days in the English metropolis. My first care was to hand over the letters of introduction I got in Teheran to those distinguished savants and politicians who were connected with Central Asia, and who had a pre-eminent interest in the results of my travels. SIR HENRY RAWLINSON.My first visit was to Sir Henry Rawlinson, who was then, and is even now, the greatest living authority on all scientific and political questions associated with Central Asia. He received me in a most affable manner in his house in Berkeley Street, Berkeley Square, where he was living at that time; and although I was able to lead an English conversation, still for the sake of better fluency I preferred Persian, of which Sir Henry, late ambassador of Great Britain in Persia, was a perfect master, and which he really handled with exquisite refinement. The topic of our conversation was of course Bokhara, Khiva, Herat, and Turkestan, places of which the learned decipherer of the cuneiform inscriptions of Behistan had an astounding store of information. My details about the capture of Herat by Dost Mohammed Khan, about the campaign of the Emir of Bokhara against Kokhand in favour of Khudayar Khan, and particularly the rumours I heard about the approach of the Russian detachment under Tchernayeff, were the topics in which he seemed most interested. It was a kind of cross-examination which I had to go through; and after a conversation of nearly an hour's length, I took leave with the full conviction that my first dÉbut was not an unsuccessful one. SIR RODERICK MURCHISON.The next call I made was upon Sir Roderick Murchison, the President of the Royal Geographical Society at that time, whose house, at 16, Belgrave Square, gave me for the first time an idea of the comfort and luxury surrounding an English literary man of distinction. I need scarcely say that Sir Roderick, whose amiability is world-wide known, received me, not like a foreigner introduced to him by his friend, but like a fellow-traveller—as became the good-hearted patron of all those whose efforts were directed towards the furthering of geographical knowledge. He did not care much about the languages, the manners, and the habits of Asiatic people, but rather about orographical and hydrographical facts; and he actually showed some disappointment on hearing from me that I neither brought cartographical sketches nor specimens of the geological formations. Having been asked whether I had brought some drawings with me, I answered not quite to his satisfaction, that I carried only a small pencil not larger than the half of my thumb with me, concealed under the wadding of my dervish dress, and that if people had noticed my making any use of this contrivance, I certainly should not have had the pleasure of my present interview with him. The good old man was unable to realize the great dangers I ran in my disguise, for he always thought of his own journey to the Ural, executed under the princely protection of the Emperor of Russia—he being provided with ample means from home. The topic which he most decidedly shunned was politics; for whenever I touched the question of the Russian approach to the frontiers of India, and of the very near term of Russian encroachment upon Central Asia, he immediately said smilingly, "Oh, you must not believe that; the Russians are a nice people; their Emperor is an enlightened, noble prince, and the Russian plans in Asia cannot mean mischief against the interests of Great Britain." As to the enlightened character of the late Russian Emperor, nobody had any doubt. His esteem and consideration for science had an eloquent symbol in the pair of magnificent malachite vases which were in the house of Sir Roderick Murchison, who was much liked at the Court on the Neva; but, as events have since proved, these were only testimonials of personal feelings, which had no influence whatever upon the course of politics in Asia. Excepting that this single difference of opinion occurred, my first meeting with the President of the Royal Geographical Society succeeded beyond all my expectations. He invited me to lecture before the society at its concluding meeting, and asked me to dinner on an early evening. I confess the kind manner in which this noble-hearted gentleman treated me during my sojourn in London, and the rich hospitality which I so frequently enjoyed in his house, will be ever green in my memory.

LORD STRANGFORD.The third man upon whom I called was the late Viscount Strangford, the wonderful Oriental linguist and the brilliant writer. I say on purpose wonderful, for I rarely met a man in my life whose almost supernatural ability to speak and to write many European and Asiatic languages caused me so much astonishment. Our conversation began in the Turkish of Constantinople, in that refined idiom, whereof six or eight words out of every ten are certainly either Arab or Persian, only the others belonging to the genuine Turkish stock. To use this language in an elegant way, it is requisite to adapt one's mode of thinking entirely to that of thoroughbred Orientals, to have besides a proficiency in the standard works of Mohammedan literature, and, above all, to have moved a good deal in the so-called Effendi society. It is certainly no exaggeration to say that Lord Strangford, fully adequate to these exigencies, would have been taken by everybody for a downright Effendi, had it not been for the peculiarly Celtic shape of his head, and for the way in which he used to turn it to the right and to the left of his shoulders. Finding that I had come fresh from the East, where for many years I used Turkish as a colloquial and literary language, he was delighted to renew with me all his reminiscences of a long stay on the Bosphorus, and particularly to have somebody who was able to give him oral information about the language and literature of Central Asia, in which he was so much interested. Having flattered myself with the hope that I should become the only authority in Europe on Eastern-Turkish, the reader may fancy my astonishment when I heard from the mouth of an English nobleman the recital of such poems as those of Nevai, which had hitherto escaped my attention, and when he gave me the explanation of words which I had vainly looked for in the Eastern dictionaries. Lord Strangford was quite a riddle to me; for apart from his knowledge in Eastern tongues, he spoke almost all European languages; he was a Sclavonic scholar, he knew Hungarian, nay, even the language of the Gipsies; and what struck me most was his vast information concerning the various literatures and histories of these peoples. No wonder, therefore, that I felt from the beginning a particular attraction to the learned Viscount, and that he also, as I afterwards had ample opportunity to learn, took a fancy to me and became my most zealous and disinterested supporter in England. Envy and jealousy had no place in the noble heart of Lord Strangford; he gave himself all possible pains to introduce me everywhere, and to level the ground before me, and the standing I gained in London society was entirely due to his exertions.

Amongst the introductions which I had brought with me from Teheran was one to Mr., now Sir Henry, Layard, another to the late Sir Justin Sheil, formerly Ambassador at Teheran, and recommendations to several men of note connected in some way or other with the interior of Asia. Sir Henry Layard who was at that time Under Secretary of State for Foreign Affairs, received me in his open, straightforward, British manner. Not many years having elapsed since the politician of high standing was himself a traveller in Asia, he behaved towards me like a colleague and like a former brother in arms. The same I must say in reference to the late Sir Justin Sheil and Lady Sheil; the latter was kind enough to give me the necessary hints as to the complicated laws and social tone of the West End; in one word, all my friends helped together to shape out of the rough material of the ci-devant dervish the lion of the London season. No easy task of course, if you consider that the said dervish, although a European by birth, had never before been west of his own country, and that his education and his continual studies were not made to facilitate such a change in his life. But what does not man attempt for the sake of success? Necessity and assistance had soon transformed the lame Mohammedan beggar into an admired lion of the British metropolis; and the man, who but a few months before had to wander about in tatters and to beg his daily bread by chanting hymns and by bestowing blessings upon true believers in Asia, became the wonder of the richest and the most civilized society of the Western world!

It is the details of this extraordinary change that I have to relate to my gentle reader.

The account of my adventures having become known in strictly scientific circles, my friends thought it necessary to bring me before the larger public, and the first forum in which I had to appear was the Royal Geographical Society. There was, however, a rather curious hindrance to the final settlement, an incident which I cannot leave untold. A few days after my arrival in London I noticed that some of my friends began to have a shy look, and that they treated me with a good amount of caution, if not suspicion. Having just finished the career of a dangerous disguise, and being accustomed to the suspicious looks of men, I did not at first feel disconcerted; but the fact nevertheless excited my curiosity, and speaking just then with General Kmethy, my countryman of Kars renown and a popular member of London Society at that time, about the strange attitude of people, I was told by the good man, in a half-laughing and joking manner, that I was probably unaware of the serious danger in which I found myself in London. I heard then that some, even the best of my friends, on seeing my sun-burned, swarthy face, and on hearing my unmistakably genuine Persian and Turkish conversation, got rather suspicious about me, and took me for some Persian vagabond who had learned English in India, and who, after having succeeded in getting letters of introduction, was now playing a comedy for English scholars and diplomatists. It was only the formal assurance of General Kmethy that I was a countryman of his and a member of the Hungarian Academy, which dissipated the doubts that had arisen. "Is it not strange?" said I to myself. "In Asia they suspected me to be a European, and in Europe to be an Asiatic; languages have really an immense power of fascination!" This difficulty having been removed and an unimpaired confidence having set in, I began to work out a short account of my travels in English, to be read before the Royal Geographical Society—a paper which Mr. Laurence Oliphant, who was acting at that time as foreign secretary of the Society, was kind enough to revise. A LION IN LONDON.I must say that it was with a good deal of impatience and anxiety that I looked forward to the evening of my first dÉbut before a select English audience such as the members of the London Geographical Society have been always, and are even now. My anxiety was the much more justified, as it happened that on the same evening a political question of a far-reaching interest, namely, whether England should side with Denmark in her struggle with Germany, was to be discussed in the House of Parliament, and my friends as well as myself apprehended the presence of a very small audience at our proceedings. The usual dinner at Willis's Rooms which preceded our meeting went off tolerably well. My health was proposed by Sir Roderick Murchison in very kind terms and drunk with much cheering; and, when I returned thanks, I concluded my little speech by conferring a Mohammedan blessing upon the dinner party—reciting the first Surah of the Koran with all the eccentricity of the Arabic guttural accent, and with all the queerness of genuine Moslem gesticulation. I need scarcely say that my mode of recital elicited a good deal of merriment. We left the table and went straight to Burlington House.

AT BURLINGTON HOUSE.Here I found a meeting much larger than I expected, an attendance which I ascribe to the novelty of the whole case. Before all, it was the sight of a European who had wandered about in the interior of Asia in the disguise of a holy beggar without a penny in his pocket, and who had succeeded in penetrating countries hitherto little or not at all known. Secondly, it was the curiosity to hear a foreigner, only a few days in England, address an English meeting in the language of the country; and last, if not least, it was the interest the British public felt at that time in Bokhara, the place of the martyrdom of two heroic sons of Great Britain—I mean of Conolly and Stoddart—and the town from which the Rev. Dr. Joseph Wolff had only returned a few years previously, after his most extraordinary adventures. Suffice it to say that the meeting was most respectable from a quantitative point of view. Sir Roderick opened it with a good humour quite in accord with his jolly and radiant after-dinner face; and whilst Mr. Clements Markham read my paper in his magnificent stentorian voice, I had plenty of leisure to observe the assembly and to prepare for the speech which had to follow. On being asked by the President to come before the public and to give an oral account of what had just been read, I confess that I experienced something of the position in which I stood before the Emir of Bokhara—with the essential difference of course, that in case of a failure the bloody tyrant would have handed me over to the executioner, whilst the indulgent English public would have expressed its displeasure by benignant laughter. I collected, therefore, all my linguistic powers, and, after the utterance of the first ten or fifteen words, the flood of oration went off uninterruptedly. For more than half an hour I spoke with animation of the salient incidents of my adventurous journey to Samarkand. Oh, glorious language of Shakespeare and Milton! I am sure nobody has ever tormented thee so much as I did in those thirty-five minutes; nobody has murdered the Queen's English in such a cruel way as the ex-dervish in Burlington House! And yet the English audience showed itself exceedingly kind towards the reckless foreigner. I was much applauded and cheered; and when, following the summons of Sir Roderick, I gave to the meeting my blessing with the genuine Arabic text, the whole society burst into a fit of laughter, which made the walls nearly tremble. Then followed the long business of handshaking and congratulations; and though all the futilities of this world may disappear from me, Lord Strangford's "Well done, dervish!" will never cease to resound in my ear like the sweetest music I ever heard in my life.

From this moment dates the beginning of my career in England. What followed was only the effect of this first successful step. In the report of the next morning's papers I noticed only a few reproaches of my foreign accent; as to the account of my travels there was a unanimous approval and admiration. No wonder, therefore, that a few weeks sufficed to make my name familiar over the whole of the United Kingdom. London society vied in the manifestation of all kinds of acknowledgment. Invitations to dinner-parties and to visit in the country literally poured in upon me, even from persons whom I never saw or met in my life; and it happened frequently that I had to write thirty letters of refusal and acceptance in one day. I got calls from all sorts of persons with well-sounding names, who, provided with a card of one of my friends, came to my humble lodging in Great Portland Street or to the AthenÆum Club, where I enjoyed the hospitality of a guest, to shake hands and to have a conversation with me. Infinite was the number of those letters in which I was asked for my likeness or for my autograph.

Surprised by these various kinds of distinction, at the outset I endured the burdens of my reputation with patience, nay with a good amount of satisfaction, but in the end they began to be a little too wearisome—particularly as I had to write the account of my journey and to work up the meagre notes written on small paper scraps with lead pencil, which loose sheets, by having been worn concealed under the wadding of my beggar-dress, were somewhat obliterated and had become hardly legible. Assisted by a happy gift of memory, I succeeded, however, in writing down my adventures; and in three months I had revised the proof-sheets of my first book, entitled "Travels in Central Asia." THE SORROWS OF AUTHORSHIP.The task, I frankly own, cost me more trouble and exertion than many of the most trying parts of my travels. Only those who for months and years have moved about freely in the open air, and who have learned to appreciate the charms of a continually wandering life with all its exciting adventures—only those will know with what unspeakable pangs and sufferings a former traveller can shut himself up in a room, from which he sees only a small bit of the sky, and sit down to write consecutively for hours every day for weeks and months! I need scarcely say that I breathed more freely after having finished my book, and handed it over to Mr. John Murray, who became my publisher on the recommendation of Lord Strangford, and who behaved towards me in a satisfactory way. The honorarium of five hundred pounds which I got, and of which I spent nearly the half in London, did not make me rich at all. The truth is, my material situation was not very much changed: a dervish in Asia, I remained a fakir in Europe; but I gained by my book something more valuable than money, namely, the acknowledgments of the English public, and fame and reputation over the whole European and American Continents.Upon the invitation of the friends I had in the meantime made I also went to satisfy the curiosity of leading political men, who were anxious to hear details about the threatening collision between England and Russia in the distant East, of which I threw out only a few hints in the concluding chapter of my book, but which nevertheless had aroused the greatest attention. It was in this way that I came into connection with politics and with the political men of that time, such as Members of Parliament, political writers, retired civilians and military officers of India, and, consequently, got the opportunity of an interview with Lord Palmerston, to whom I had already been cursorily introduced at a dinner-party in the house of Sir Roderick Murchison. His Lordship received me at his home in Piccadilly, and my visit was therefore of a strictly private character. He did not address me exactly as he did the late Dr. Livingstone, to whom he said, "You had a nice walk across Africa!" But his first remark was, "You must have gone through nice adventures on your way to Bokhara and Samarkand!" And he really listened with greatest attention to all that I said about Dost Mohammed Khan, about the haughtiness of the Emir of Bokhara and about the dangers I ran in the last-named town. On touching the question of the Russian advance towards Tashkend, I took the map out of my book which was on the table, and pointed to Chimkent as the place where the Russians stood at that time; but his Lordship showed, or at least feigned, great incuriosity, trying always to turn the thread of conversation to other insignificant topics. Whenever I thought I had caught his attention he immediately came forward with the question, "And did you not betray your European character?" or "How could you stand that long trial and those privations?" or with similar remarks. It was only after renewed attacks upon his taciturnity that he dropped, in a careless manner, a few allusions either to the barbarous state of affairs in Central Asia or to my over-sanguine opinions of the Russian strength in that quarter of the world. He succeeded in showing outward indifference, but he was far from convincing me of its existence. In my interview with Lord Clarendon I fared much better. It took place late in the Autumn of 1864, when the famous note of Prince Gortschakoff, after the Russian capture of Tashkend, had been made known, and when the public opinion of England seemed to have been roused suddenly from its stupor. His Lordship was frank enough to admit the truth of what I said in the last chapter of my book; but he added at the same time what has since become the standing principle of optimists in England: "Russia's policy in Central Asia is framed in the same way as ours in India; she is compelled to move gradually from the North to the South, just as we were obliged to do in our march from the South to the North. She is doing services to civilization, and we do not care much even if she takes Bokhara."