mission to dedicate to you this my
first essay as an Author, I beg to tender my best acknowledgements for
the honour, and for the interest you have so kindly expressed in the
success of the following pages. Under such favourable auspices a
successful result may be confidently anticipated by

Your Lordship's Obliged and obedient servant,

ROLLO BURSLEM.

HAREWOOD LODGE, HAMPSHIRE.

TO THE READER.

The following pages are literally what they profess to be, a record
of a few weeks snatched from a soldier's life in Affghanist[=a]n, and
spent in travels through a region which few Europeans have ever visited
before. The notes from which it is compiled were written on the desert
mountains of Central Asia, with very little opportunity, as will be
easily supposed, for study or polish. Under these circumstances, it can
hardly be necessary to deprecate the criticism of the reader.
Composition is not one of the acquirements usually expected of a
soldier. What is looked for in his narrative is not elegance, but
plainness. He sees more than other people, but he studies less, and the
strangeness of his story must make up for the want of ornament. I can
hardly expect but that the reader may consider the style of my chapters
inferior to many of those which are supplied to the public by those who
are fortunate enough to enjoy good libraries and plenty of leisure; two
advantages which a soldier on service seldom experiences. But this I
cannot help. Such as they are, I offer him my unadorned notes; and
perhaps he will be good enough to let one thing compensate another, and
to recollect that if the style of the book is different from what he
sometimes sees, yet the scenery is so too. If instead of a poetical
composition he gets a straightforward story, yet instead of the Rhine
or the Lakes he gets a mountain chain between Independent Tartary and
China.

WALMAR BARRACKS, _March_, 1846.

A PEEP INTO TOORKISTH[=A]N.[*]

[* Note: A portion of the following pages in their original form has
appeared in the Asiatic Journal.]

CHAPTER I.

During the summer of 1840, the aspect of the political horizon in
Affghanist[=a]n afforded but slight grounds for prognosticating the
awful catastrophe which two short years after befel the British arms.
Dost Mahommed had not yet given himself up, but was a fugitive, and
detained by the King of Bokhara, while many of the principal Sirdars
had already tendered their allegiance to