The two names of Ibn Batuta and Sir John Mandeville now conclude our mediaeval 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. [Illustration: 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.