[Footnote 1: The opinion consequently that we Hungarians go to Asia to seek there those of our race who were left behind, is erroneous. Such an object, the carrying out of which, both from ethnographical as well as philological reasons, would be an impossibility, would render a man amenable to the charge of gross ignorance. We are desirous of knowing the etymological construction of our language, and therefore seek exact information from cognate idioms.] The foregoing observations will explain the object which I proposed to myself in my wanderings from the Bosphorus to Samarcand. Geological or astronomical researches were out of my province, and had even become an impossibility from my assumption of the character of a Dervish. My attention was for the most part directed to the races inhabiting Central Asia, of whose social and political relations, character, usages, and customs I have striven, however imperfectly, to give a sketch in the following {ix} pages. Although, as far as circumstances and my previous avocations permitted, I allowed nothing that concerned geography and statistics to escape me, still I must regard the results of my philological researches as the principal fruits of my journey. These I am desirous, after maturer preparation, to lay before the scientific world. These researches, and not the facts recorded in the present pages, must ever be regarded by me as the real reward of a journey in which I wandered about for months and months with only a few rags as my covering, without necessary food, and in constant peril of perishing by a death of cruelty, if not of torture. I may be reproached with too much limiting my views, but where a certain object is proposed we should not lose sight of the principle, 'non omnia possumus omnes.' A stranger on the field to which the publication of this narrative has introduced me, I feel my task doubly difficult in a land like England, where literature is so rich in books of travels. My design was to record plainly and simply what I heard and saw, whilst the impression still remained fresh on my mind. I doubt much whether I have succeeded, and beg the kind indulgence of the public. Readers and critics may find many errors, and the light that I may throw upon particular points may be accounted too small a compensation for the hardships I actually encountered; but I entreat them not to forget that I return from a country where to hear is regarded as impudence, to ask as crime, and to take notes as a deadly sin. {x}