Let me resume the volume which I have laid down to pursue the foregoing reflections, and, while the eastern storm drives through the autumn woods, hurling its mingled volume of rain and leaves against my window, ask the reader to look over my shoulder and follow with me for a while the pilgrimage of Abou Abdallah Mohammed, better known under the name of Ibn Batuta,--'may God be satisfied with him, and confound those who have an aversion towards him!'--to apply to himself his own invocation in favor of another. Ibn Batuta, a native of Tangier, in Morocco, unquestionably takes the first rank among the travelers of the Middle Ages, if we consider the distances he traversed, the remote points he reached, or the number of years consumed by his wanderings. From Pekin to Timbuctoo, from the Volga to the Ganges, from Bukhara to Zanzibar, he vibrated to and fro, making himself acquainted, with the exception of Christian Europe, with the greater part of the known world. He touched, in many directions, the borderland of darkness, beyond which the earth fell off precipitously into chaotic depths which no mortal might explore. Having reached home again after uncounted perils, he sat down to tell the story of his adventures. Many of his notes had been lost by the way, and he was obliged to depend mainly on his memory; but as this is a faculty which all genuine travelers must not only possess, but cultivate by constant exercise, his narrative is remarkably clear, complete, and truthful. Born on the 24th of February, 1304, he set out, in his twenty-second year, on a pilgrimage to Mecca, traversing the Barbary States and Egypt on the way. Once fairly launched in the world, twenty-four years elapsed before he again saw his native town. He explored the various provinces of Arabia; visited Syria, Persia, and Armenia; resided for a while in Southern Russia (Kipchak), then belonging to princes of the line of Genghis Khan; traveled by land to Constantinople, where he was presented to the emperor; repeated his pilgrimage to Mecca, and reached Zanzibar. Then, returning, he made his way to Bukhara, and through Afghanistan to the Indus; exercised, for two years, the functions of a _Kadi_, or judge, at Delhi; was appointed by the Sultan Mohammed, the son of Togluk Khan, on an embassy to the emperor of China, but, missing the Chinese vessel, was obliged to remain a year and a half among the Maldive Islands. Nothing daunted by the delay, he started again, by way of Ceylon and the Indian Archipelago, and finally succeeded in reaching Pekin. He appears to have returned to Tangier in the year 1349, and to have taken up his residence soon afterwards in Granada, under the protection of the caliph Yusef. His thirst for exploration, however, was not yet quenched, and in two years he was ready to undertake a second journey of greater difficulty and danger. Leaving Fez with a caravan, in the year 1351, he crossed the Sahara, and spent three years in Central