Across Asia on a Bicycle by Allen and Sachtleben

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ACROSS ASIA ON A BICYCLE

[Illustration: THROUGH WESTERN CHINA IN LIGHT MARCHING ORDER.]

ACROSS ASIA ON A BICYCLE

THE JOURNEY OF TWO AMERICAN STUDENTS FROM CONSTANTINOPLE TO PEKING

BY THOMAS GASKELL ALLEN, JR. AND WILLIAM LEWIS SACHTLEBEN

NEW YORK THE CENTURY CO. 1894

_All rights reserved._

THE DEVINNE PRESS.

_THOSE AT HOME_

WHOSE THOUGHTS AND WISHES WERE EVER WITH US IN OUR WANDERINGS

PREFACE

This volume is made up of a series of sketches describing the most interesting part of a bicycle journey around the world,--our ride across Asia. We were actuated by no desire to make a "record" in bicycle travel, although we covered 15,044 miles on the wheel, the longest continuous land journey ever made around the world.

The day after we were graduated at Washington University, St. Louis, Mo., we left for New York. Thence we sailed for Liverpool on June 23, 1890. Just three years afterward, lacking twenty days, we rolled into New York on our wheels, having "put a girdle round the earth."

Our bicycling experience began at Liverpool. After following many of the beaten lines of travel in the British Isles we arrived in London, where we formed our plans for traveling across Europe, Asia, and America. The most dangerous regions to be traversed in such a journey, we were told, were western China, the Desert of Gobi, and central China. Never since the days of Marco Polo had a European traveler succeeded in crossing the Chinese empire from the west to Peking.

Crossing the Channel, we rode through Normandy to Paris, across the lowlands of western France to Bordeaux, eastward over the Lesser Alps to Marseilles, and along the Riviera into Italy. After visiting every important city on the peninsula, we left Italy at Brindisi on the last day of 1890 for Corfu, in Greece. Thence we traveled to Patras, proceeding along the Corinthian Gulf to Athens, where we passed the winter. We went to Constantinople by vessel in the spring, crossed the Bosporus in April, and began the long journey described in the following pages. When we had finally completed our travels in the Flowery Kingdom, we sailed from Shanghai for Japan. Thence we voyaged to San Francisco, where we arrived on Christmas night, 1892. Three weeks later we resumed our bicycles and wheeled by way of Arizona, New Mexico, and Texas to New York.

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