In all that concerns man, indeed, a much plainer speech was permitted to the old traveler.  There were no squeamish readers in those days, and hence, in some respects, he is too candid for modern taste.  But it often happens that precisely the characteristics or customs of strange races which are of most value to the anthropologist, belong to those cryptic mysteries of human nature, to which, in our refined age, one is prohibited from referring.  At least, the absence of constraint—­the possibility of entire frankness, even though the writer should have no occasion to avail himself of the privilege—­imparts a rare loveliness and raciness to the narrative.  On the other hand, in modern works which I have tested by my own personal knowledge of the subject, I have been quite as much struck with the amount of suppressed as with that of expressed truth.  Mansfield Parkyns and Captain Burton, I have no doubt, will bear me out in this statement.  Why has no African explorer, for instance, yet ventured to announce the fact,—­at once interesting and important,—­that if a traveler in the central regions of that continent could be accompanied by his wife, the chances of his success would be greatly improved?  In the apparent celibacy of explorers, barbarous races perceive simply an absence or perversion of the masculine instinct, which at once excites their distrust.

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.