Around the World on a Bicycle
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Citation
Thomas Stevens. Around the World on a Bicycle. 1887. cyclearchive.com, https://cyclearchive.com/books/around-the-world-on-a-bicycle-t-stevens-1887/
Page numbers are pages of the PDF, which can differ from the numbers printed on the page.
Contents
- Thomas Wentworth Higginson's foreword, dated Cambridge, Massachusetts, April 10, 1887, recalls hearing Stevens speak at a Massachusetts Bicycle Club dinner and likens the solitary rider to Jules Verne and Sinbad the Sailor.
- Stevens sets out from San Francisco and climbs over the Sierra Nevada mountains and the Sacramento Valley foothills, opening his ride across the American West.
- Riding through the sagebrush plains near Reno and the Comstock lode country, Stevens meets a lone Washoe Indian on a mustang and jokingly offers to cure his 'sick foot' with a monkey-wrench.
- Crossing the 'Great American Desert' of Utah past Pilot Peak, Stevens falls headfirst into a railway section-house cistern while trying to draw water, then lodges overnight in the Mormon town of Terrace and at the Matlin section-house.
- Leaving Fort Sidney, Nebraska with a military pith helmet given him by the post commander, Stevens rides the plains and witnesses a great thunderstorm at Lodge Pole Station on his way east to the Atlantic seaboard.
- Stevens sails from New York aboard the City of Chicago, crossing with members of Henry Irving's Lyceum Company and the traveller Harry B. French, who briefs him on China, before landing in Europe and riding toward the German frontier.
- Riding through Alsace into Germany via Saarburg and Pfalzburg, Stevens contrasts the bearing of German and French soldiers before continuing through Saverne into Austria-Hungary.
- Rain-bound at the fortified Slavonian city of Eszek (Osijek), Stevens is shown around by the assistant editor of the newspaper Der Drau before riding on with his Hungarian companion Igali into Servia.
- Entering Bulgaria at the Zaribrod custom-house, Stevens crosses mountain country worked by goat-herds and pony pack-trains plying between Sofia and Nisch, continuing through Roumelia into Ottoman territory.
- Riding south from Eski Baba at the muezzin's dawn call, Stevens crosses muddy, roadless wheat country south of the Balkans, watched by large harvesting gangs of Armenians, Arabs, and Africans, on the approach to Constantinople.
- Having resolved to press on to Teheran for the winter rather than turn back, Stevens outfits his bicycle with spare spokes, tire cement, and a tent, then boards the Ismidt steamer out of Constantinople to begin the Asian leg of his ride.
- Setting out from Ismidt (Izmit) at dawn, Stevens passes mohair caravans arriving from Angora and rides the macadam road along the gulf into forested, swampy country toward the Anatolian interior.
- Travelling with a caravan whose khan-jee smooths over a dispute with a hostile young teamster, Stevens crosses a mountain pass on a deep, slaty-clay trail too narrow to wheel the bicycle normally, in the mohair-goat country around Angora.
- Descending into the Charkhan Valley, famed for its musk-melons, Stevens compares its wind-carved rock formations to the castellated cliffs of Green River, Wyoming, as he rides east from Bey Bazaar and Angora.
- Reaching the village of Jas-chi-khan on the Kizil Irmak River, Stevens finds ancient ruins and a headless marble lion beside an old arched bridge, then watches carpet-weavers at a khan on his way toward Yuzgat (Yozgat).
- Stevens crosses a low spur into the valley of the eastern fork of the Delijah Irmak, resting at a Koordish encampment whose wealthy but sometime-plundering nomadic herdsmen he describes, before pushing on toward Yuzgat.
- Leaving Yuzgat for Koelme with a mounted zaptieh as guide, Stevens stumbles on a reunion of the Armenian Pampasian-Pamparsan family camped by the road, who ply him with refreshments as he enters the Sivas vilayet on the way into Armenia. (Title recovered from the body text; the printed contents page dropped it, showing only its start page.)
- Crossing boulder-strewn plains and mountain camel-paths, Stevens is fed wheat-bread and boiled eggs by an Armenian village whose people watch, amused, as he eats with a pocket-knife, on his route toward Erzingan (Erzincan) and Erzeroum (Erzurum).
- Overtaken by evening near Mount Ararat, Stevens lodges in a squalid Koordish village where humans and livestock shelter under one roof, and is received in the verminous quarters of the local Sheikh.
- Crossing into Persia, Stevens is stoned by laborers near Mohammed Ali Khan's garden and observes the khan and his moonshi-bashi (chief secretary) dispensing rough Persian civil justice, on the caravan trail toward Tabreez (Tabriz).
- Escorted for sport by Persian cavalrymen charging and wheeling on Martini-Henry-armed horses along the Indo-European Telegraph Company's line, Stevens rides on from Tabreez toward Teheran.
- Arriving in Teheran, Stevens describes the Shah's court and public appearances, then walks the twelve-mile city ramparts with telegraph official Mr. Meyrick past the Gulaek and Ispahan gates, and notes the exiled Afghan chieftain Ayoob Khan on the streets.