Travels in Kashmir Ladakh & Central Asia

The name "Central Asia" correctly describes, in a geographical sense, the heart of that continent. It is separated from the river- system of the Aral and Caspian Seas, on the west, by almost impassable mountain-ranges; from the affluent of the Indus and Ganges, on the south, by the chain of the Kunlun, the rival of the Himalayas and from the rivers of China to the eastward, by the great Desert of Gobi. A line drawn from Constantinople to Peking and another from the latitude of Cape Comorin to that of the Polar Sea, bisecting the former line, would very nearly indicate the central portion of the region, as also the continent.

Here-partly, perhaps, on account of its remote and nearly inaccessible situation. and also partly from concurrent traditions many ethnologists have placed the original cradle of the Aryan race. India was undoubtedly colonized by tribes descending from the high plateaus to the northward and the legends of the earlier Aryan inhabitants of Europe have been traced backward, step, by step, until they lose themselves among the labyrinths of mountains from which descend the Oxus and the Jaxartes. The remarkable physical features of the region must have impressed themselves upon even the primitive inhabitants. The three enclosing mountain chains, which form almost three sides of a square, rise to such an elevation that few of their passes are less than 18,000 feet above the sea. Above the western wall lies the tableland of Pamer or Pamir, called by the natives Bam-i-doonia or "Roof of the World". The fertile lands beyond those upper realms of rock and snow and scanty summer pastures, can only be reached after many days of dangerous travel, where beasts of burden find no food, where water is rarely to be had and where, even in summer, hurricanes of intense cold threaten to destroy of life in a few hours.

Bayard Taylor was born on January 11, 1825, in Kennett Square in Chester County, Pennsylvania. He was the fourth son, the first to live to maturity, of the Quaker couple, Joseph and Rebecca (née Way) Taylor. His father was a well to-do farmer. Young Bayard received his early instruction in an academy at West Chester, and later at Unionville. At the age of seventeen, he was apprenticed to a printer in West Chester His interest in poetry was coached by the influential critic and editor Rufus Wilmot Griswold, who encouraged him to write a volume. of poetry. Published at Philadelphia in 1844, Ximena, or the Battle of the Sierra Morena, and other Poems was dedicated to Griswold. It made little income, but indirectly was a means of his introduction to The New York Tribune.

Taylor always said he had an affinity for the Near and Far East. In 1851 he traveled to Egypt, where he ascended along the Nile River as far as 12° 30' N. He also traveled in Palestine and Mediterranean countries. He drew on these experiences and sights for many poems. Towards the end of 1852, from England he sailed for Calcutta, proceeding thence to China, where he joined the historic expedition of Commodore Matthew Calbraith Perry to Japan.

The results of these journeys (besides his poetical memorials) were A Journey to Central Africa; or, Life and Landscapes from Egypt to the Negro Kingdoms of the White Nile (New York, 1854); The Lands of the Saracen; or, Pictures of Palestine, Asia Minor, Sicily and Spain (1854); and A Visit to India, China and Japan in the Year 1853 (1855).

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