Remaining about five weeks in Constantinople, where, owing to the difference of manners, language, and religion, he does not appear to have tasted of much pleasure, he returned to Mohammed Uzbek, whose bounty enabled him to pursue his journey towards the east in a very superior style. The country to which his desires now pointed was Khavāresm, the road thither traversing, during the greater part of the way, a barren desert, where little water and a very scanty herbage were to be found. Crossing this waste in a carriage drawn by camels, he arrived at Khavāresm, the largest city at that period possessed by the Turks. Here he found the people friendly towards strangers, liberal, and well-bred,—and no wonder; for in every mosque a whip was hung up, with which every person who absented himself from church was soundly flogged by the priest, besides being fined in five dinars. This practice, which Ibn Batūta thought highly commendable, no doubt contributed greatly towards rendering the people liberal and well-bred. Next to the refinement of the people, the most remarkable thing he observed at Khavāresm was a species of melon, green on the outside, and red within, which, being cut into thin oblong slices and dried, was packed up in cases like figs, and exported to India and China. Thus preserved, the Khavāresm melon was thought equal to the best dried fruits in the world, and regarded as a present worthy of kings. From hence Ibn Batūta departed for Bokhāra, a city renowned throughout the east for the learning and refinement of its inhabitants, but at this period so reduced and impoverished by the long wars of Genghis Khan and his successors, that not one man was to be found in it who understood any thing of science. Leaving this ancient seat of oriental learning, he proceeded to Māwarā El Nahr, the sultan of which was a just and powerful prince, who received him hospitably, and furnished him with funds to pursue his wanderings. He next visited Samarkand, Balkh, and Herat, in Khorasān; and scaling the snowy heights of the Hindoo Koosh, or Hindoo-Slayer, so called because most of the slaves attempted to be carried out of India by this route are killed by the severity of the cold, he entered Kabul. Here, in a cell of the mountain called Bashāi, he found an old man, who, though he had the appearance of being about fifty, pretended to be three hundred and fifty years old, and assured Ibn Batūta that at the expiration of every hundred years he was blessed with a new growth of hair and new teeth, and that, in fact, he was the Rajah Aba Rahim Ratan of India, who had been buried in Mooltam. Notwithstanding his innate veneration for every thing saintly, and this man bore the name of _Ata Evlin_, or “Father of Saints,” our honest traveller could not repress the doubts which arose in his mind respecting his extraordinary pretensions, and observes in his travels that he much _doubted_ of what he was, and that he continued to doubt.