In 1890, two American college graduates set out to travel around the world on a then-new invention, the modern bicycle. In 1893 they returned, have covered over 15,000 miles, at that time the "longest continuous land journey ever made around the world." This is their account their trip across Turkey, Persia, Turkestan and northern China. It described their adventures traveling along through regions few outsiders ever visited. Out of print over a century, this book is now back in print with additional notes and maps.
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Thomas Stevens was the first to circle the world by bicycle, doing so in the 1880s using a giant wheeled bicycle. These two young men were the second to accomplish this great feat and the first to do so using modern bicycles. In addition, they used the much more dangerous route across central Asia.
Unfortunately, the arrival of the automobile put a quick and unfortunate end to the age of globe-circling bicycle travel. As a result, this book has been out of print since the 1890s.
This newly typeset edition contains all the original text plus additional notes describing the people they met and places they visited. There are also two additional chapters. One is the reprint of a 1899 article in Outing magazine describing their adventure. The other is a short biography of each author based on information collected by the college they attended, Washington University. --This text refers to the Hardcover edition.
Excerpt. © Reprinted by permission. All rights reserved.
From the 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 every 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 around 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.
During all of this journey we never employed the services of guides or interpreters. We were compelled, therefore, to learn a little of the language of every country through which we passed. Our independence in this regard increased, perhaps, the hardships of the journey, but certainly contributed much toward the object we sought—a close acquaintance with strange peoples.
During our travels we took more than two thousand five hundred pictures, selections from which are reproduced in the illustrations to this volume.
Thomas Gaskell Allen, Jr. and William Lewis Sachtleben --This text refers to the Hardcover edition.
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2 of 2 people found the following review helpful:
5.0 out of 5 stars
An Amazing Tale of Fortitude,
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This review is from: Across Asia on a Bicycle: The Journey of Two American Students from Constantinople to Peking (Paperback)
What an incredible story these young men had to tell! The book picks up with the Asia part of their journey and while reading their accounts of the people and places they saw I was transported back to a time when all travel was "adventure" travel. Included is the account of their insane-by-today's-standards summit of Mt Ararat. This book is for cyclists and non-cyclists alike and is compelling reading - giving a world view and pre-World War perspective on the people of the middle and far east. These young men from America were the first to demonstrate the "safety" bicycle to the Asian people and may very well have sparked the common use of bicycles throughout the world.
2 of 2 people found the following review helpful:
4.0 out of 5 stars
Biking in foreign lands long ago.,
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This review is from: Across Asia on a Bicycle: The Journey of Two American Students from Constantinople to Peking (Paperback)
A fast moving narrative, interesting and full of twists of fate. Two young men take on the world in bygone times, when nations allowed such things. Riders of today will wonder at the challenge - but the same lure that drives cross-country cycling today is certainly in these pages.
5.0 out of 5 stars
Great read.,
By VTIVX (California) - See all my reviews
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This review is from: Across Asia on a Bicycle: The Journey of Two American Students from Constantinople to Peking (Paperback)
Had heard about this book a few years ago and wanted to get it after traveling in some of the areas they traveled in. It helped fill in some of the gaps in understanding what I saw / experienced from a historical perspective. Would definitely recommend. I only wish I had the guts those guys had.
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