THE END OF MEDIÆVAL EXPLORATION

The two names of Ibn Batuta and Sir John Mandeville now conclude our mediæval period of travel to the Eastward. Both the Arab and the Englishman date their travels between the years 1325 and 1355; but while Ibn Batuta, the traveller from Tangiers, adds very valuable information to our geographical knowledge, we have to lay the travel volumes of Sir John Mandeville aside and acknowledge sadly that his book is made up of borrowed experiences, that he has wantonly added fiction to fact, and distorted even the travel stories told by other travellers. And yet, strange to say, while the work of Ibn Batuta remains entirely disregarded, the delightful work of the Englishman is still read vigorously to-day and translated into nearly every European language. In it we read strange stories of Prester John, "the great Emperor of India, who is served by seven kings, seventy-two dukes, and three hundred and sixty earls"; he speaks of the "isle of Cathay": he repeats the legend of the island near Java on which Adam and Eve wept for one hundred years after they had been driven from Paradise; he speaks of giants thirty feet high, and of Pigmies who came dancing to see him.

SIR JOHN MANDEVILLE ON HIS TRAVELS.
From a MS. in the British Museum.

We turn to the Arab traveller for a solid document, which rings more true, and we cannot doubt his accounts of shipwreck and hardships encountered by the way. Ibn Batuta left Tangiers in the year 1324 at the early age of twenty-one on a pilgrimage to Mecca. He made his way across the north of Africa to Alexandria. Here history relates he met a learned and pious man named Imam.

"I perceive," said Imam, "that you are fond of visiting distant countries?"

"That is so," answered Ibn Batuta.

"Then you must visit my brother in India, my brother in Persia, and my brother in China, and when you see them present my compliments to them."

Ibn Batuta left Alexandria with a resolve to visit these three persons, and indeed, wonderful to say, he found them all three and presented to them their brother's compliments.

He reached Mecca and remained there for three years, after which he voyaged down the Red Sea to Aden, a port of much trade. Coasting along the east coast of Africa, he reached Mombasa, from which port, so soon to fall into the hands of the Portuguese, he sailed to Ormuz, a "city on the seashore," at the entrance to the Persian Gulf. Here he tells us of the head of a fish "that might be compared to a hill: its eyes were like two doors, so that people could go in at one eye and out at the other." Crossing central Arabia and the Black Sea, he found himself for the first time in a Christian city, and was much dismayed at all the bells ringing. He was anxious to go north through Russia to the Land of Darkness, of which he had heard such wonderful tales. It was a land where there were neither trees, nor stones, nor houses, where dogs with nails in their feet drew little sledges across the ice. Instead he went to Constantinople, arriving at sunset when the bells were ringing so loud "that the very horizon shook with the noise." Ibn was presented to the Emperor as a remarkable traveller, and a letter of safe conduct was given to him.