Africa, visiting the great cities Melli and Timbuctoo. He was thus the first to give the world an authentic account of those regions. His descriptions correspond, in almost all respects, with those given by the travelers of modern times. Ibn Batuta returned to Morocco in 1354, and there remained until his death, in 1378. During the year after his arrival, he dictated the history of his travels to Ibn Djozay, a young Moorish poet, who, having been unjustly treated by Yusef, in Granada, fled to Fez, where he was appointed secretary to the Sultan, Abau Inau Faris. The latter, it appears, commanded that the work should be written, and it was also, no doubt, by his order that Ibn Djozay became the amanuensis of our traveler. 'He was recommended,' says the introduction, 'to bestow great care on the correctness and elegance of the style, to render it clear and intelligible, in order that the reader may better enjoy the rare adventures, and draw the greatest profit from the pearl, after it shall have been extracted from its shell!' To Ibn Djozay, therefore, we are indebted for the abundant poetic quotations interspersed throughout the work--the ornaments which hang, sometimes with curious effect, on the plain, straight-forward story which Ibn Batuta tells us. Making the usual allowance for Oriental exaggeration, and the occasional confusion which must occur in a memory so overcharged, we do not hesitate to pronounce the work worthy of all credit. Burkhardt, Seetzen, and Carl Ritter have expressed their entire confidence in the fidelity of the narrative. This interesting work was known to European scholars, until quite recently, in a fragmentary condition, frequently disfigured by errors of transcription. Since the French occupation of Algiers, however, two or three perfect copies have been discovered, one of which, now in the Imperial Library at Paris, bears the autograph of Ibn Djozay. The publications of the _Société Asiatique_ furnish us with the narrative, carefully collated, and differing but slightly, in all probability, from the original text. Let us now run over it, freely translating for the reader as we go. The introduction, which is evidently from the elegant hand of the amanuensis, is so characteristic that we must extract a few Title and all, it opens as follows: A PRESENT MADE TO OBSERVERS, TREATING OF THE CURIOSITIES OFFERED BY THE CITIES AND OTHER WONDERS ENCOUNTERED IN TRAVEL.