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 Societe 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.

’In the name of God, the Clement, the Merciful:  Behold what says the Shekh, the judge, the learned man, the truthful, the noble, the devout, the very benevolent, the guest of God; who has acquitted himself of the visit to the holy places, to the honor of religion; who, in the course of his travels, has placed his confidence in the Lord of all creatures—­Abou Abdallah Mohammed, son of Abdallah, son of Ibrahim Allewatee Alhandjee, known under the name of Ibn Batuta:  may God be merciful to him, and be content with him, in his great bounty and generosity!  Amen.

’Praise be to God, who has subjected the earth to those who serve him, in order that they may march by spacious roads—­who has placed them on the earth, and there located the three vicissitudes of their destiny:  the creation, the return to the earth, and the resurrection from its bowels.  He has extended it by his power, and it has become a bed for his servants.  He has fixed it by means of inaccessible mountains, of considerable elevation, and has raised over it the summit of heaven, unsupported by a pillar.  He has made the stars to appear as a guide in the midst of the darkness of the land and the sea; he has made a lamp of the moon, and a torch of the sun.  From heaven he has caused waters to descend, which vivified the ground when it was dried up.  He has made all varieties of fruits to grow, and has created diversified regions, giving them all sorts of plants.  He has caused the two seas to flow—­one of sweet and refreshing waters, the other salt and bitter.  He has completed his bounties towards his creatures, in subjecting to them the camels, and in submitting to them the ships, similar to mountains, serving them as vehicles, instead of the surface of the desert, or the back of the sea.’

After having, in like manner, pronounced a benediction on Mohammed, the Prophet’s friends, and all others in any way connected with him, he greets the Sultan of Morocco with a panegyric so dazzling, so unapproachable in the splendor of its assertions, that we must quote it as a standard whereby all similar compositions may be measured, sure that it will maintain its pre-eminence through all time.