Embarking on board a small boat, called a sambūk, he descended the Tigris to Abbadān, whence it was his intention to have proceeded to Bagdad; but, adopting the advice of a friend at Basra, he sailed down the Persian Gulf, and landing at Magul, crossed a plain inhabited by Kurds, and arrived at a ridge of very high mountains. Over these he travelled during three days, finding at every stage a cell with food for the accommodation of travellers. The roads over these mountains were cut through the solid rock. His travelling companions consisted of ten devotees, of whom one was a priest, another a muezzin, and two professed readers of the Koran, to all of whom the sultan of the country sent presents of money. In ten days they arrived in the territories of Ispahan, and remained some days at the capital, a large and handsome city. From thence he soon departed for Shiraz, which, though inferior to Damascus, was even then an extensive and well-built city, remarkable for the beauty of its streets, gardens, and waters. Its inhabitants likewise, and particularly the women, were persons of integrity, religion, and virtue; but our singular traveller remarks, that for his part he had no other object in going thither than that of visiting the Sheïkh Majd Oddin, the paragon of saints and workers of miracles! By this holy man he was received with great kindness, of which he retained so grateful a remembrance, that on returning home twenty years afterward from the remotest countries of the east, he undertook a journey of five-and-thirty days for the mere purpose of seeing his ancient host. The greater portion of the early life of Ibn Batūta was consumed in visiting saints, or the birthplaces and tombs of saints: but his time was not therefore misemployed; for, besides the positive pleasure which the presence or sight of such objects appears to have generated in his own mind, at every step he advanced in this sacred pilgrimage his personal consequence, and his claims upon the veneration and hospitality of princes and other great men, were increased. As he may be regarded as the representative of a class of men extremely numerous in the early ages of Islamism, and whose character and mode of life are highly illustrative of the manners of those times, it is important to follow the footsteps of our traveller in his whimsical wanderings a little more closely than would otherwise be necessary.