No great length of time had elapsed, however, before Ibn Batūta perceived that his grandeur had conducted him to the edge of a precipice. Having, during a short absence of the emperor, visited a certain holy man who resided in a cell without the city, and had once been in great favour with Mohammed himself, our traveller received an order to attend at the gate of the palace, while a council sat within. In most cases this was the signal of death. But in order to mollify the Fates, Ibn Batūta betook himself to fasting, subsisting, during the four days in which he thus attended, upon pure water, and mentally repeating thirty-three thousand times that verse of the Koran which says, “God is our support, and the most excellent patron.” The aquatic diet and the repetitions prevailing, he was acquitted, while every other person who had visited the sheïkh was put to death. Perceiving that the risks incurred by a judge of Delhi were at least equal to the emolument, Ibn Batūta began to feel his inclination for his own free roaming mode of life return, resigned his perilous office, bestowed all the wealth he possessed upon the fakeers, and bidding adieu to the splendid vanities of the world, donned the tunic of these religious mendicants, and attached himself during five months to the renowned Sheïkh Kamāleddin Abdallah El Ghazi, a man who had performed many open miracles. Mohammed Khan, conceiving that the ex-judge had now performed sufficient penance for his indiscretion, sent for him again, and receiving him more graciously than ever, observed, “Knowing the delight you experience in travelling into various countries, I am desirous of sending you on an embassy into China.” Ibn Batūta, who appears by this time to have grown thoroughly tired of a fakeer’s life, very readily consented, and forthwith received those dresses of honour, horses, money, &c. which invariably accompanied such an appointment. Ambassadors had lately arrived from the Emperor of China with numerous costly presents for the khan, and requesting permission to rebuild an idol temple within the limits of Hindostan. Mohammed Khan, though, as a true Mussulman, he could not grant such permission unless tribute were paid, was now about to despatch ambassadors to his brother of China, “bearing, in proof of his greatness and munificence, presents much more valuable than those he had received.” These presents, as highly illustrative of the manners of those times and countries, we shall enumerate in the words of the traveller himself; they consisted of the following articles:—One hundred horses of the best breed, saddled and bridled; one hundred Mamlūks; one hundred Hindoo singing slave girls; one hundred Bairami dresses, the value of each of which was a hundred dinars; one hundred silken dresses; five hundred saffron-coloured dresses; one hundred pieces of the best cotton cloth; one thousand dresses of the various clothing of India; with