As it is only natural that small communities on the lower steps of civilisation are either too lazy or too incapable to think, and are guided in their opinion by the views of the higher and leading ranks of society, I am not surprised that in certain circles of Hungary for years together I was looked upon with suspicion, and that my book of travels, which in the meantime had been translated for several Eastern and Western nations into their mother-tongue, was simply discredited at home. Similar causes have elsewhere, under similar conditions, produced similar effects. When the nickname of "Marco Millioni" could be given to the celebrated Venetian who traded all over Asia, why should I mind their treatment of me in Hungary, where, apart from national archæological considerations, nobody evinced any great interest in the distant East? Among the millions of my countrymen there was perhaps no more than one who had ever heard the names of Bokhara and Khiva, and under the extremely primitive cultural conditions of those days geographical explorations were not likely to excite very great interest. The nation, languishing in the bonds of absolutism, and longing for the restoration of Constitutional rights, was only interested in politics; and, since the few scientists, who in their inmost minds were convinced of the importance of my undertaking, had become prejudiced by the reception I had received abroad and were now filled with envy, my position was truly desperate, and for years I had to bear the sad consequences of ill-will. When the first Turkish Consul for Hungary appeared in Budapest he was asked on all sides whether it was really true that I knew Turkish, and when he replied that I spoke and wrote Turkish like a born Osmanli, everybody was greatly surprised. One of my kind friends and patrons said to me in reply to my remark that I should talk Persian with Rawlinson, "You can make us believe this kind of thing, but be careful not to take in other people." A few weeks later Rawlinson took me for a born Persian, but at home they said it was unheard of for a Hungarian scientist to be able to speak Persian. So deplorably low was the standard of Hungarian learning in those days!