TRANSLATOR'S PREFACE.
The last journey undertaken by M. Bonvalot, who was on this occasion accompanied by Prince Henry of Orleans, the eldest son of the Duc de Chartres, has, perhaps, excited even greater interest than the preceding one, when, together with two other Frenchmen, he accomplished the difficult if not unprecedented feat of reaching India by scaling those tablelands of the Pamir—the "roof of the world," as that mountain mass is often called—concerning which there is so much talk just now. M. Bonvalot entitled that book, "Aux Indes par terre," or, to give it the English title which I adopted as an equivalent, "Through the Heart of Asia." It was a laborious and even dangerous journey, bringing out those qualities of courage, self-command, tenacity, knowledge of human character, and good-humour, which go to make up the successful traveller and explorer. It is to the possession of all these qualities that he undoubtedly owes the renown which he has achieved as a traveller, and I do not think it will be possible for anyone to read the following pages without being impressed with the fact that M. Bonvalot — who was evidently well seconded by his two companions, Prince Henry and the Belgian missionary Father Dedeken—is not only a man of dauntless pluck, but a keen observer of men. If he has not that undue and self-depreciating modesty which is but pride in another form, he does not in any way boast of his exploits; but one has only to read his dispassionate and almost bare record of the temperature and the privations of the months spent on the highlands of Thibet to realise what the chilling cold and the wasting miseries of that terrible winter must have been.
Yet all this is related in as matter-of-fact a tone as if the
