The ÁrminiusVambéinterview had lasted for about an hour, and the frank and open manner of the men deepened the favourable impression they had made upon me at the outset. Although the characteristic features of their race, their careless and shabby attire, and the effects of the miseries of a long and fatiguing journey, all combined to give them a wild, almost repulsive appearance; yet throughout the whole interview my mind was busy with the question of the feasibility of undertaking my travels in Central Asia in the company of these very pilgrims. I was thinking that being natives they would be the best guides I could possibly obtain, and it was something to be known to them as Reshid Effendi, and to have been seen by them as such at the Turkish Embassy. I did not hesitate long and told them of my intention to join their caravan. Of course, I was prepared for their putting questions to me about the purposes of my journey, and I was equally clear in my mind that it would be both idle and injurious to tell these men of the scientific researches I had in view. They would have thought it ridiculous for an Effendi, a gentleman, to expose himself to untold dangers for the sake of some ideal object, and indeed might have entertained all sorts of suspicions against me had I told them the truth. I had to resort to a subterfuge which both flattered my guests and advanced my interests. I told them that my soul had been harbouring for a long time the secret but most ardent wish to visit Turkestan (the only country abounding in genuine Islamite virtues) and the saints of Khiva, Samarkand and Bokhara. "This longing desire," I continued, "had brought me from Roum (Turkey), and now after having waited for a year in Persia for a favourable opportunity to gratify it, I had reason to thank God for having sent me, at length, such men as they were, in whose company I could continue my journey and attain the most cherished object of my life."
It was an extraordinary struggle I had to overcome in inventing this pretext, but I sought in vain for another means. My long experience with Orientals of many countries and of various ranks had fully convinced me of the utter uselessness of a straightforward confession of my purposes. I knew that with these simple and ignorant men science and curiosity must be discredited as the chief motors of my errand, and that all my oratorical power would fail to convince them of the possibility that a man living under the patronage of a high official of the Sultan was ready to undergo all the hardships and perils of a distant journey, for the sake of philological inquiries and for ethnographical discoveries. Hard and reluctant as it was, I had to resort to subterfuge, and to assume in their eyes a moral as well as a physical incognito.