It was followed by five others, and I thus had the time to carefully observe the nature of the country and the genius of the people. I pushed the last three beyond the Ganges and to the island of Java; and during the space of forty years I have traveled more than 60,000 leagues by land, having returned only once from Asia to Europe by sea. Thus I have seen at leisure in my six voyages and by different routes, all of Turkey, all of Persia and all of India, and especially the famous diamond mines, where no European had been before me. It is of these three great Empires that I propose to give a complete and exact account, and I will begin with the different routes that can be taken to go from Paris to