I cannot hide the fact that as I increased in years my creative power visibly decreased. What I learned in the sixties, or rather tried to learn, did not long remain in my memory, and could not be called material from which anything of lasting value could be made. Only the custom of many years' active employment urged me on to labour, and under the influence of this incitement appeared my smaller works. 1. _The Travels and Adventures of the Turkish Admiral Sidi Ali Reis, in India, Afghanistan, Central Asia, and Persia, during the years 1553-1556._ London, 1899. 2. _Noten Zu den Alttürkischen Inschriften der Mongolei und Siberiens._ Helsingfors, 1899. (Notes to the Old Turkish Inscriptions of Mongolia and Siberia.) 3. _Alt-Osmanische Sprachstudien._ Leiden, 1901. (Old Osmanli Linguistic Studies.) It never entered my mind to try to attract the special attention of the profession with these unassuming contributions. It is not given to all, as to a Mommsen, Herbert Spencer, Ranke, Schott, and others, to boast of unenfeebled mental powers in their old age. _Sunt atque fines!_ And he who disregards the approach of the winter of life is apt to lose the good reputation gained in better days. APPENDIX III MY RELATIONS WITH THE MOHAMMEDAN WORLD I will here shortly relate in what manner I became connected with the Mohammedans of India. My own depressing circumstances at the time of my sojourn in Asia had given me a fellow-feeling with the downtrodden, helpless population of the East, and the more I realised the weakness of Asiatic rule and government, the more I was compelled to draw angry comparisons between the condition of things there and in Western lands. Since then my judgment of human nature has become enlarged, and consequently more charitable, but at the time I am speaking of, the more intimately I became acquainted with the conditions of the various countries of Europe the more clearly I seemed to see the causes of the decline in the East. Our exalted Western professions of righteousness and justice after all did not amount to much. Christianity seemed as fanatical as Islam itself, and before very long I came to the conclusion that our high-sounding efforts at civilisation in the East were but a cloak for material aggression and a pretext for conquest and gain. All this roused my indignation and enlisted my sympathies with the peoples of the Islamic world. My heart went out in pity towards the helpless victims of Asiatic tyranny, despotism, and anarchy, and when an occasional cry was raised in some Turkish, Persian or Arabic publication for freedom, law and order, the call appealed to me strongly and I felt compelled to render what assistance I could. This was the beginning of my pro-Islamic literary activity, and as a first result I would mention my work on _Islam in the Nineteenth Century_, followed by several short articles. Later I proceeded from writing to public speaking, and I