Across Asia on a bicycle E-Book

Thomas Gaskell Allen Jr.

• Herausgeber: Youcanprint
• Kategorie: Abenteuer, Thriller, Horror
• Sprache: Englisch
• Veröffentlichungsjahr: 2018

Beschreibung

Beginning in June, 1890, two young American students made a journey around the world on a then-new invention, the modern bicycle. They have covered over 15,000 miles in just under three years, so in 1893 they returned. They regard their journey through Western China and the Desert of Gobi as the most interesting and most dangerous parts of their travels. They have described their adventures traveling along through regions few outsiders ever visited.

Leseprobe

Table of Contents

PREFACE

- I. BEYOND THE BOSPORUS

- II. THE ASCENT OF MOUNT ARARAT

- III. THROUGH PERSIA TO SAMARKAND

- IV. THE JOURNEY FROM SAMARKAND TO KULDJA

- V. OVER THE GOBI DESERT AND THROUGH THE WESTERN GATE OF THE GREAT WALL

- VI. AN INTERVIEW WITH THE PRIME MINISTER OF CHINA

ACROSS ASIA ON A BICYCLE

THE JOURNEY OF TWO AMERICAN STUDENTS

FROM CONSTANTINOPLE TO PEKING

Thomas Gaskell Allen and William Lewis Sachtleben

First digital edition 2018 by Maria Ruggieri

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.