rough the wide ocean to this extraordinary
country--bethinking myself of the answer once made by a man who had
undertaken a voyage, on being asked by his friends what he had seen
most wonderful--'The greatest wonder I have seen is seeing myself
alive on land!'" The troubles of the khan, however, were far from
being ended by his arrival on _terra firma_: for apparently from
some mistake or inadvertence, (the cause of which does not very
clearly appear,) on the part of the friends whom he had expected to
meet him, he found himself, on landing at Blackwall and proceeding
by the railway to London, left alone by the person who had thus far
been his guide, in apartments near Cornhill, almost wholly
unacquainted with the English language, separated from his baggage
and servants, who were still on board the Edinburgh, and with no one
in his company but another Hindustani, as little versed as himself
in the ways and speech of Franguestan. In this "considerable
unhandsome fix," as it would be called on the other side of the
Atlantic, the perplexities of the khan are related with such
inimitable naivete and good-humour, that we cannot do better than
give the account of them in his own words. "As I could neither ask
for any thing, nor answer any question put to me, I passed the whole
night without a morsel of food or a drop of water: till in the
morning, feeling hungry, I requested my companion to go to some
bazar and buy some fruit. He replied that it would be impossible for
him either to find his way to a bazar through the crowds of people,
or to find his way back again--as all the houses were so much alike.
I then told him to go straight on in the street we were in, turning
neither to the right nor the left till he met with some shop where
we might get what we wanted: and, in order to direct him to the
place on his return, I agreed to lean half out of the window, so
that he could not fail to see me. No sooner, however, did he sally
forth, than the people, men, women, and children, began to stare at
him on all sides, as if he had dropped from the moon; some stopped
and gazed, and numbers followed him as if he had been a criminal
about being led to execution. Nor was I in a more enviable position:
the people soon caught sight of me with my head and shoulders out of
the window; and in a few minutes a mob had collected opposite the
door. What was I to do? If I withdrew myself, my friend on returning
would have no mark to find the ho