che permission to travel from Tashkend to
Vladivostock through Turkestan and Siberia, a document obtained from St.
Petersburg through the United States minister, the Hon. Charles Emory
Smith. Of this route to the Pacific we were therefore certain, and yet,
despite the universal opinion that a bicycle journey across the Celestial
empire was impracticable, we had determined to continue on to the border
line, and there to seek better information. "Don't go into China" were the
last words of our many kind friends as we wheeled out of Tashkend on the
seventh of May.

At Chimkend our course turned abruptly from what was once the main route
between Russia's European and Asiatic capitals, and along which De
Lesseps, in his letter to the Czar, proposed a line of railroad to connect
Orenburg with Samarkand, a distance about equal to that between St.
Petersburg and Odessa, 1483 miles. This is also the keystone in that wall
of forts which Russia gradually raised around her unruly nomads of the
steppes, and where, according to Gortchakoff's circular of 1864, "both
interest and reason" required her to stop; and yet at that very time
General Tchernaieff was advancing his forces upon the present capital,
Tashkend. Here, too, we began that journey of 1500 miles along the
Celestial mountain range which terminated only when we scaled its summit
beyond Barkul to descend again into the burning sands of the Desert of
Gobi. Here runs the great historical highway between China and the West.

From Auli-eta eastward we had before us about 200 miles of a vast steppe
region. Near the mountains is a wilderness of lakes, swamps, and streams,
which run dry in summer. This is the country of the "Thousand Springs"
mentioned by the Chinese pilgrim Huen T'sang, and where was established
the kingdom of Black China, supposed by many to have been one of the
kingdoms of "Prester John." But far away to our left were the white sands
of the Ak-Kum, over which the cloudless atmosphere quivers incessantly,
like the blasts of a furnace. Of all these deserts, occupying probably one
half of the whole Turkestan steppe, none is more terrible than that of the
"Golodnaya Steppe," or Steppe of Hunger, to the north of the "White Sands"
now before us. Even in the cool of evening, it is said that the soles of
the wayfarer's feet become scorched, and the dog accompanying him finds no
repose till he has burrowed below the burning surface. The monotonous
appearance of the step