telegram," I merely shared the general error produced by a garbled version of an actual event; and I sent the despatch only after receiving the same news from four officers in succession, whom I had every reason to believe well-informed. The articles alleged to have been written after my engagement with the Daily Telegraph were all written before it, that entitled, "From Sevastopol to Balaklava" being as old as February 5, 1873; but I readily admit sending home en route two unused papers which I had overlooked in the hurry of departure.

As to my self-repetition, I have no desire to excuse what is wholly inexcusable, but I should wish to say a few words on the subject nevertheless. What I had to do during my whole residence in the East was to sustain a very difficult assumed character, or rather series of characters, to obtain every kind of assistance and information from perfect strangers, without betraying my real object, to despatch letters and telegrams under the hourly risk of detection, and to force my way, with an English passport, into the heart of a region where the very presence of an Englishman is strictly prohibited. All this, superadded to growing ill-health, made the task of constant writing (when as yet there was little to write about) so intolerable, that I was glad to lessen the strain by using familiar words, even while conscious that I must have used them before. I had not, how

ever, a single magazine with me; and I did see my "old savage" of the Crimea exactly reproduced, not merely on the Volga, but at least a dozen times in Turkestan.

With regard to the present work, it makes no pretence of being a history of the Khiva Expedition. I did my best to let at least one Englishman share the credit justly due to the brave man who represented America on that occasion; but, as events have fallen out, the honour is his, and his alone. But for the publication of my name, and my consequent seven weeks' imprisonment at Fort No. 1, I should have reached Khiva as I reached Samarcand; but although he has succeeded where I failed, I can none the less heartily wish him God-speed.

As for myself, I have as yet seen only one-half (the most important half, it is true) of Central Asia; and as soon as I have recovered the effects of my last attempt (for it is no light thing to cross one thousand three hundred miles of desert under heavy rain, with a fever and three unhealed hurts) I shall try again. In the meantime, all that I wish to do is to tell my own story fairly, and to leave among my own countrymen, from whom I have been parted so many years, some better reputation than that of a liar and impostor.

January, 1874.

DAVID KER.