Excerpt from From the Black Sea: Through Persia and India These preliminary lines of explanation are only to show why this journey was undertaken at such an unfortunate moment, and that there was some underlying method in its apparent madness. When the route was first mapped out, it was our intention to follow the line of the Trans Caspian Railway to Samarcand, and thence to Herat, and through Afghanistan to India. But the political situation and the civil war in Afghanistan rendering such a trip hazardous, we decided to take the trans-persian direction, and to enter Persia near Meshed. About the Publisher Forgotten Books publishes hundreds of thousands of rare and classic books. Find more at www.forgottenbooks.com This book is a reproduction of an important historical work. Forgotten Books uses state-of-the-art technology to digitally reconstruct the work, preserving the original format whilst repairing imperfections present in the aged copy. In rare cases, an imperfection in the original, such as a blemish or missing page, may be replicated in our edition. We do, however, repair the vast majority of imperfections successfully; any imperfections that remain are intentionally left to preserve the state of such historical works.