complete the first transcontinental bicycle ride on 4 August 1884. Harper's reported: "More than one-third of the route followed by Mr. Stevens had to be walked. Eighty-three and a half days of actual travel and twenty days' stoppage for wet weather, etc., made one hundred and three and a half days occupied in reaching Boston, the distance by wagon-road being about 3,700 miles. He followed the old California trail most of the way across the plains and mountains, astonishing the Indians, and meeting with many strange adventures." Thomas Wentworth Higginson, who heard Stevens speak at the Massachusetts Bicycle Club, said: "He seemed like Jules Verne, telling his own wonderful performances, or like a contemporary Sinbad the Sailor. We found that modern mechanical invention, instead of disenchanting the universe, had really afforded the means of exploring its marvels the more surely. Instead of going round the world with a rifle, for the purpose of killing something – or with a bundle of tracts, in order to convert somebody – this bold youth simply went round the globe to see the people who were on it; and since he always had something to show them as interesting as anything that they could show him, he made his way among all nations." Europe Stevens passed the winter in New York and contributed sketches of his transcontinental trip to Outing, a cycling magazine. It made him a special correspondent and sent him on the steamer City of Chicago to Liverpool. He landed there 10 days later, on 9 April 1885. He left his bicycle in the underground storerooms of the London and North Western Railway and went by train to London to arrange his crossing of Europe and investigate conditions in Asia. He was helped by an interpreter at the Chinese embassy who discouraged him from riding across Upper Burma and China. He returned to Liverpool on 30 April 1885 and on 4 May made a formal start to his ride at Edge Hill church, where several hundred people watched him leave. He wrote: A small sea of hats is enthusiastically waved aloft; a ripple of applause escaped from 500 English throats as I mount my glistening bicycle; and with the assistance of a few policemen, 25 Liverpool cyclers who have assembled to accompany me out extricate themselves from the crowd, mount, and fall into line two abreast; and merrily we wheel down Edge-lane