Four Pilgrims

He tells us of all in architecture that struck him as worthy of mention, of the products of the soil, of the habits of the people, and of their government.He praises the emulation of the provincial Emirs of Egypt in good works and the building of mosques.He watches the gathering of great personages at the procession of the Mahmil, or drapery woven to cover that sanctuary at Mecca wherein lay the object of Arabian worship ages before Mohammed was born.For the Sacred Stone fell from Paradise with Adam; and the Archangel Gabriel carried it to him for the house which he built to God.

Magistrates and juris consults, the great officials of the Sultan and the Syndics of Corporations, some on horseback, some on foot, assemble at Cairo and await the Holy Drapery. The Emir who, this year, is to head the annual pilgrimage, arrives with attendant troops and camels and water-carriers. A conical box encloses the sacred cloth. All the nondescript population of the city follow it. By some trick of the camel-drivers, their beasts are urged to strange screeching; and the motley throng makes its slow progress round the city, a winding river of vivid colour and odd effect; a procession not without dignity, but which an ancient Athenian had perhaps found a tawdry show compared with the simple grace of the procession of the peplops in his City of the Violet Crown.

From Cairo, our pilgrim makes his way to Panopolis, then “a great town, fine and well-built,” and so to Syene, partly following the river where each new morning mocks the ruined temples, and partly taking short cuts across the desert.

A holy man told him that he would find it impossible to fulfil his pilgrimage just then; but he pushed across the unpeopled sands which lie between the Nile and the Red Sea, and, after a trying journey of fifteen days, found himself among a “black” race, called Bodjas, who were settled at Aidhab, at that time a port of considerable trade. These people wore yellow garments and affected the smallest of head-gear. They would seem to have preserved their independence by martial spirit; and, as is so often the case among a warrior-people, daughters were not allowed to succeed to property. At this moment, they were at war with the Mamaluke soldiery of Egypt; and it was impossible for pilgrims to get transport across the Red Sea.

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CHAPTER III

A ROUNDABOUT PILGRIMAGE

Now, besides the shrewd reading of Batûta’s character by the holy man of Alexandria, who saw in him the born traveller, another Sheik had also read his man aright and foretold that he should meet the seer’s brothers in widely separated parts of the world. Oracles are often suggestive and start the way to their own fulfilment. These predictions actually came about. Batûta assures us that he had at the time no intention of running over nearly all of the known earth; but by now an inborn tendency to keep moving had developed into a veritable wanderlust“A brief space,” sings Pindar, “a brief space hath opportunity for men; but of him it is known surely when it cometh, and he waiteth thereon.”Batûta’s opportunity had come to him.Stopped from reaching Mecca during the present pilgrimage, he resolved to retrace his steps to Cairo, push on to Palestine, visit its sacred spots and the renowned cities of Syria, join the Syrian Caravan, and take the long, fearsome journey from Damascus over the Arabian waste.Here was occasion to visit holy places only less interesting to the Moslem than to the Christian, to wander at leisure in notable lands, and to compare the amazing ways of the tribes of men.He sold all that might encumber him, and returned to High Egypt.The Nile was in flood; he sailed down it, spent a night at Cairo, and pushed on, (A.D. 1326). There was a caravan-route to Palestine, north of Sinai, with stations in the desert. Each station had its Khân, or inn, an institution which afforded bed and stabling, but not food or fodder.But there was a shop at each station, where all that might be wanted was sold; and there was a water-cistern, free to all comers at the door of each inn.At the frontier of Palestine, there was a custom-house, and a passport must be produced before one was allowed to cross the boundary in either direction. At Khalil, a town of Hebron, remarkable for its beauty, and also for the unusual distinction of being well lit at night, Batûta admired a mosque said to have been reared by those genii whom the wisdom of Solomon had made his servants, and whom he evoked by his mystic talisman. Passing through Palestine, our pilgrim visited those very few places the sanctity of which could be established by indisputable record and those very many places which owed their fame to rank imagination or crafty legend begotten of sordid avarice. He went to the birthplace of Jesus, because the Moslem regards Jesus as a fore-runner of Mohammed: and from Bethlehem he came to Jerusalem. He thought the Mosque there as fine a building as any on earth. It occupied one side of a vast courtyard, and its fretted walls and roof shone with gilding and vivid colours. In the middle of the Mosque was a rock, so brilliant in hue that no idea of its glory could be given. And this was the rock whence (so says tradition) Mohammed rode up to heaven on the sacred winged ass.

Tyre, “mother of cities fraught with pride,” Acre and Askalon were in ruins—the result of the Crusades.Tiberias rejoiced in a bathing-establishment.Having plenty of time to fill up before the Syrian caravan should leave Damascus, the pilgrim wandered hither and thither, backwards and forwards, and saw many famous cities, such as Beyrout, Tripoli, Aleppo, Baalbec, Emessa and Antioch.He found all the people who inhabited the district of Gabala sadly misguided; for they believed Ali, son-in-law of the Prophet to be a god.They neither purified themselves, nor prayed, nor fasted.They had turned mosques into cattle-sheds; and, should any pious wanderer wish to pray in one of the desecrated buildings, these heretics were wont to gibe at him and shout: “Don’t pray, ass that thou art; fodder shall be given thee.”

Nomads from Central Asia had penetrated Asia Minor and reached the Mediterranean shore.Here and there they had settled; just as Scythian and Hun, Goth and Vandal once forced their way into the Roman Empire and effected lodgement within it before they rose and overthrew it.But the Emirs, whatever their nationality, would seem to have maintained decent government.Sometimes the despotisms of Islam surprise us by such unexpected qualities as sagacity, prudence, and self-restraint.At Latakia, Batûta found that, when anyone was condemned to die, the official appointed to superintend the execution was expected to go up to wherever the condemned man might be, return without apprehending him, and ask the Emir to repeat the sentence.Not until three such journeys had been made and the sentence thrice delivered was it carried out.On the other hand, secret murder was a favourite political engine.Our pilgrim beheld, on the heights of Lebanon, strongholds of that military sect, the Hashashin, to which we owe the word assassin.“They will admit no stranger among them, unless he be of their own body.The Sultan, El Malik El Nasir, uses them as his arrows; and, through them, he strikes down those of his foes that dwell afar from him; such, for instance, as may dwell in Persia or anywhere else.Various duties are allotted to different men among them; and when the Sultan wishes one of them to waylay some foe, he bargains as to the price of blood.Should the murderer accomplish his work, and return to safety, his reward is paid to him; and should he fail, his heirs receive it.These folk carry poisoned knives wherewithal to strike their prey.”

Laodicea would seem to have been held by a ruler who, like the robber-barons of Germany or the pirates of Dalmatia, was a terror to the trader: “he is said to take by violence all the ships he can.”Like all travellers, Batûta is enthusiastic about the glories of Lebanon.He found it “the most fertile mountain on Earth, where are copious springs of water and shady groves; and it is laden with many kinds of fruit. And I beheld there very many of that host of hermits who have left the world that they may devote themselves to God.”

Two thousand feet above the sea-level lay Damascus, most ancient of cities, with a delightful climate and a productive soil.“The chief Mosque is the most splendid in the world, most tastefully built, excelling in beauty and grace.”His interest in mosques and public worship is inextinguishable; and he recounts the dramatic methods of a certain preacher.There dwelt at Damascus an imam whose orthodoxy was not above suspicion; indeed he had already suffered imprisonment on that score.It so fell out that, one Friday, I was at his preaching.He came down the stairway of the pulpit calling out: ‘God came down to the Earthly Paradise in the very same way as I am coming down.’A theologian who was there denied this; and the congregation, set on the preacher and beat him.A complaint was made against this too literal expositor; he was cast into prison, and there he died.

Islam has always been remarkable for charity.Damascus boasted many benevolent institutions.“As I was passing along a street one day,” says Batûta “I saw a slave-child who had dropped a porcelain dish, made in China, which lay in pieces on the ground.A crowd gathered round the little Mameluke, and one of them said, ‘Pick up the pieces and carry them to the overseer of the Utensils Charity.’This man took the little slave with him to the overseer, who at once gave him what money was necessary to buy such another dish.This is one of the best of these endowments; for the owner of the slave would doubtless have beaten him or scolded him severely.Moreover he would have been heart-broken.So the endowment really relieves sorrowful bosoms.” Batûta gives more than one little indication that children (and even his own wives occasionally) could touch his heart. The Moslem can be very pitiful; he usually treats his slaves kindly; and one does not wonder that our pilgrim speaks warmly about the piety and high civilization of Damascus in his time. He was licensed to teach in that beautiful city; but found time to visit the cavern which is one of the places where Abraham is said to have been born, and the grotto where Abel’s blood was still to be seen; “for his brother dragged him thither.”

Batûta started with the Pilgrim’s Caravan to the Holy Cities on September 1st, 1326. Many hundreds of perilous miles lay before him. The mere solitude of the desert always inspires insupportable dread, and to secure a sufficient supply of water is a problem not always to be solved. Batûta was told how, during one pilgrimage, water gave out, and “a skin of it rose to a thousand dinars; yet both seller and buyer perished.”Ancient travellers always speak with awe of the weird noises which suddenly break the silence of the desert and inspire a new dread.Shifting sands cause these sounds.Batûta tells us of one huge sandhill called The Mount of Drums, because the Bedouins “say that a sound as of drums is heard there every Thursday night.”But this particular pilgrimage, although made along a difficult and dangerous route, was comparatively uneventful, as were all the journeys Batûta made to Mecca.He gives small space to it, and we shall find the record of a much livelier and more interesting pilgrimage from Damascus in the pages of Varthema.The journey was often one of perils, grave and manifold.

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CHAPTER IV

GLIMPSES OF ARABIA, PERSIA AND EAST AFRICA IN THE FOURTEENTH CENTURY

After duly visiting the tomb of the Prophet at Medina and performing the prescribed rites at Mecca, Batûta, still insatiate of travel, joined the Persian caravan on its homeward journey, and soon came to the place where, to this day, the devil is lapidated. “It is a great collection of stones. Everyone who comes to it hurls one. They say there was once a heretic who was stoned to death there.” From Medina, Central Arabia was crossed, and a journey of 600 miles brought the caravan to a town in the Nedjd which was one of the claimants to the possession of the bones of Ali, the son-in-law of the Prophet. Where Ali really was buried is unknown. But the excited mind worked a great effect on the body here, for, on a certain night of the year devoted to religious revival, “cripples were brought to the tomb, even from far-away lands, and were laid on it soon after sunset. Then there was praying and reciting of the Koran and prostrations; and, about midnight the halt rose up, sound and hale.”

At Bussora, the port so opulent and its trades so flourishing in the days of Haroun-al-Raschid, one dared not venture to travel abroad without the protection of a Bedouin escort: “There is no journeying possible in these parts except with them.”Yet traces remained of the former wealth of the city.“Bussora is richer in palm-trees than any place in the world.Its people are generous and friendly to strangers.One of the finest mosques is paved with red pebbles.And therein is kept that beautiful copy of the Koran which Othman was reading when he was murdered; and the stain of his blood is on it yet.”

In this district he came across vestiges of the worship of Baal. Certain of the fanatical sect called Haïderia lit a fire of wood, ate of the burning embers, rolled in them, and then trampled them with bare feet until all flame was put out. Later on, he saw the same strange feat done by the same strange sect in India, when there came to a place near Delhi, where he was encamped, men led by a very black man and wearing collars and bracelets of iron. “They stayed all night with us. Their chief asked me for wood to light a fire for them to dance by, and I requested the deputy-ruler of that part to let them have it. After the second evening prayer, the pile was lit, and, when the wood had become burning charcoal, they struck up music and began to dance into the fire; and they rolled themselves in it. Then their head-man asked me for a tunic, and I gave him one of very fine make. He put it on, rolled in the fire, and beat the embers so that the fire ceased to flare, and it went out. He then brought the tunic to me, and I found it to be undamaged. And thereat I marvelled greatly.” And between these two experiences he came across Haïderia in Eastern Persia at Turbet-Haïdarj: “They wore an iron collar, and, what is stranger still, their virilia are incarcerated to ensure their chastity.”

He now sailed down the united Tigris and Euphrates and along the coast of Persia in a small boat, and, landing at a port, travelled across the plains of Southern Persia, with high mountains right and left.He found the ways in mountainous Lâristân cut through the rocks.These parts were governed by a tributary ruler.“In every one of the stations in this country are cells made ready for those bent on religious undertakings and for travellers.Every newcomer is provided with bread, flesh, and sweetmeats.”After two months of travel, Batûta came to Ispahan, in the heart of Persia.The Sultan had already provided him with money to cover the cost of his wanderings in Persia.Eastern rulers regarded munificence as a duty: Eastern travellers claimed it as a right.From Ispahan he went southward to Shiraz, which he found a large and well-built city, but inferior to Damascus. “The inhabitants are honest, religious, and virtuous, especially the women. I went thither in order to visit that paragon of saints and of those that have the power to work miracles, Majd Oddîn. I put up therefore at the College which he founded. He was judge of the City: but, being advanced in years, his brother’s sons took on his duties for him.... He is much venerated by the Emirs of that land, so that, when they are before him, they lay hold of both their ears; which is the mark of devotion due to the Sultan.”

At El Hilla, on the banks of the Euphrates, he found a curious belief that the last of the Imams was still alive and dwelt there; but that he was invisible to mortal eye.“Every day, a hundred armed men come to the portal of the mosque.They lead with them a beast saddled and bridled; and a gathering of folk beat drums and blow trumpets.They cry aloud: ‘Come forth, Lord of the Times; for the earth is filled with evil doing and deeds of shame.Now is the hour for thee to appear, so that, through thee, Allah may divide the truth from the lie.’They wait on until night, when needs must that they go home.”

“It is an uncontrolled truth,” says Swift, “that no man ever made an ill figure who understood his own talents.”Ibn Batûta, theologian, jurist, and, by this time, experienced man of the world, knew his powers; and one of his powers was knowing how to employ the rest.We now find him accompanying the Tartar Ruler of Persia, the “Sultan of the Two Iraks and Khôrasân, to Tabriz, whither the monarch marched with his army.”Tabriz is not more than a hundred miles from Armenia and the Caspian Sea.Batûta tells us how his eyes were dazzled by the lustre of precious jewels which well-dressed slaves purchased to decorate their Tartar mistresses.The Sultan gave him a fine dress and other handsome presents; and he resolved to make a second pilgrimage to Mecca; whereupon the Sultan ordered that he should be provided with all that was necessary to further such a worthy end. But, before starting he had time to travel along the banks of the Tigris as far north as Diarbekir; for he wished to visit a saint and worker of miracles, reputed “not to break his fast during forty days at a stretch, save with a crust of barley bread.” On getting back to Bagdad he found the caravan ready to start, and took his departure with it.

Persia, exhausted by the long struggle with the Roman Empire, fell an easy prey to the Arabs; and, although it enjoyed a second era of power and prosperity under the Caliphs of Bagdad, first Seljuk Turks conquered it, and then Mongolians, under Chinghiz Khân, which, being interpreted, is the Great Khân, no other than the “Tartre Cambyuskan” of Chaucer’s Squire’s Tale, the “Cambuscan” bold of Milton’s II Penseroso.Mongolians had now possessed the land for little less than a century, and they and the Sultans of Egypt held each other in dread.Religious differences have always been convenient as a war-cry; and, from of old, religious unity has been wont to fulfil some of the functions of our modern patriotism.The Caliph at Cairo was the head of the Orthodox Sunnites, Moslems who hold the Sunna, or body of tradition which professes to preserve such teaching and laws as the Prophet gave by word of mouth as of equal authority with the Koran; but the Tartar Sultan of Persia was a Shiite, or one of those who reject the Sunna, and hold that Ali, son-in-law of the Prophet, was Mohammed’s legitimate successor.Hence Batûta found the Shiite Sultan putting pressure on the Sunnites of the great cities of Bagdad, Shiraz, and Ispahan to make them renounce the form of faith sacred to them because it was that of their fathers and further endeared because the Caliphate at Bagdad had brought such lustre to the Persian name.

Our pilgrim arrived at Mecca, for the second time, without meeting with any remarkable adventure in crossing Central Arabia. One is surprised to find so restless a spirit content to remain three years in Mecca. But Batûta was a theologian and jurist; one, moreover, who held the outward observances of Islam in high respect; and he dwelt during the whole of that time at a Mohammedan theological school. And now the old passion for travel returns, and he is completely in its grip. He is away to Jidda on the Red Sea, embarks on one of those Eastern ships which were even more wretchedly built and worse navigated than those of the Western nations, and is forced by tempest into a port between Aidhab and Suakin. Nothing daunted, he puts to sea again and arrives in Arabia the Happy. A Cadi welcomes the distinguished sage and traveller, entertains him for three days, and, on the fourth, takes him to the court of the Sultan at Zebid, one of the chief towns of Yemen. Batûta a true Oriental delights in pomp and ceremony, and describes the audience in full.

“The Sultan is to be saluted by touching the ground with forefinger, raising it to the head, and saying ‘May Allah give thee enduring rule.’This I did, copying the Cadi; who seated himself at the right hand of the Sultan, and told me to be seated facing him.The monarch sat on a daïs, which was covered with ornamental silk stuff; and right and left of him stood his warriors.Around him are sword and buckler-bearers; nearer are bowmen; and in front of these, on either side, the chamberlain, the first men of the State, and the private scribe.Djandar, the Emir, is also present before him and the officers of the guard; but the latter keep their distance.When the Sultan takes his seat, all cry aloud, ‘In the name of Allah!’and they repeat this when he rises; so that all who are in the Hall of Audience know precisely when he sits down and when he rises.Directly the Monarch is seated, all those who are wont to visit the Court and do him obeisance, come in and salute him.This done, each takes his allotted place to right or left, nor does he leave it or sit down unless commanded to do so. In the latter case, the Sultan says to the Emir Djandar, who is Chief Constable of the Palace, ‘Tell such an one to be seated.’ And the man so commanded comes forward a little way and sits down on a carpet in front of and between those who are grouped to right and left. Meats are then brought forth; and these are of two kinds, one kind being for the many, the other kind for people of importance, that is to say, the Sultan, the Chief Justice, the principal Sheriffs, jurisconsults and guests. The other sort of viands serves for the rest of the Sheriffs, jurisconsults, judges, sheiks, emirs, and officers of the army. Everyone takes the place allotted to him at the feast and everybody has room enough. I found the same form observed at the Court of the Sultan of India; and I know not which monarch hath copied it from the other.”

After visiting several cities of Yemen, which were flourishing centres of trade at that time, Batûta reached Aden, “a large city, but without water, and nothing can grow there.Rain is caught and stored up in tanks, and that is the only water to drink.But rich traders make their abode in Aden, and hither vessels come from India.”

Now the Arabs had sought for wealth in the products of Ethiopia; they had advanced along the Eastern Coast of Africa, and had established ports considerably south of Zanzibar.Batûta had a fancy to see these tropical parts; so he sailed from Aden as far as Kiloa or Kilwa, which is nine degrees south of the equator.The ship touched at various ports where there were Arab settlements; some of them by no means salubrious or agreeable.At Zeila, he experienced “an unbearable stench from decaying fish and the blood of camels, which are slaughtered in the streets:” At another station, Mogdishu, he was received with much civility.“When a ship draws up, the young men of the place come forth, and each accosts a trader, and becomes his host.Should there be a theologian or a man of station on board, he is taken to dwell with the Cadi. When it was known that I was there, the Cadi came to the beach, and his students with him, and I took up my abode with him. He led me to the Sultan who is styled the Sheik.... A servant brought vegetables and fawfel-nut ... and rose-water to us ... and this is the highest honour that can be done to a stranger.... The people are far too fat, because they gorge. One of them will eat as much as a whole congregation of worshippers ought to do.” From Mogdishu, the ship went on to Mombasa and Kiloa for a cargo of ivory. Batûta tells us of the productions of tropical East Africa, and how “the greatest gift to the peoples here is ivory, which is the tooth of the elephant.”

From Kiloa, he coasted back to the straits of Bab-el-Mandel, ran along the Gulf of Aden, and landed at Zafar, in Oman.He tells us, as does Marco Polo, how the natives feed their cattle on fish.Zafar “is a filthy place, plagued with flies by reason of the markets for fish and dates.Copper and tin pieces of money are used.The heat is so great that those who dwell there must bathe several times a day; and they suffer greatly from elephant’s leg (elephantiasis) and from ruptures.It is indeed beyond a marvel that they will hurt no one unless it be to return some hurt done to them.Many Sultans have tried to subdue them, yet naught but bale have they gotten thereby.”

Batûta travelled past the shores of Oman in a small coaster which touched at many ports.He found the banana, the betel-tree, and the cocoa-nut flourishing in this corner of Arabia, and describes them and their uses.Wishing to see what the hinterland was like, he took a seven-days’ journey from the coast, but found that it took six days to cross a desert.The inland people would seem hardly to have emerged from primitive promiscuity; for he tells us that “there wives are most base and husbands shew no sign of jealousy.” Jealousy as to the harem is an excellent masculine virtue to our good Moslem.

Crossing the Persian Gulf, the island of Hormuz was reached, whither traders had recently migrated from old Hormuz on the Persian mainland.Vases and lamp-stands of rock-salt were among the manufactures of this important mart and port of call; and hard by were the renowned fisheries for “orient pearl.”He was told, and believed, that the divers remained two hours under water, and was astounded to see people amusing themselves by crawling from orbit to orbit of the battered skull of a spermaceti whale which had been washed ashore.

Crossing the narrow strait to Persia, he hired an escort of Turkoman settlers, “a hardy and brave race, who occupy these parts and know the roads.Without them, there is no travelling.”His object in returning to Persia was to visit a man of saintly repute who dwelt far away in Lâristân.It took four days to cross a waterless desert where the Simoon blows in summer, “and kills everyone in its path; and their limbs drop away from the trunk.”At Lar, the capital, he found the saint in his cell, seated on the ground.He was clad in an ancient garment made of wool.Yet he was in the habit of giving costly presents, and had food and fresh clothing ready for all who visited him.

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CHAPTER V

TO INDIA BY WAY OF CONSTANTINOPLE AND THE STEPPES

Batûta joined the Persian Caravan to Mecca, and once again journeyed across the territory of the Wahabi in Central Arabia. This, his third pilgrimage, over, he resolved to see India. But the wretched ship in which he put forth was storm-tossed, and finally driven into a little port on the Egyptian coast. So he made across the desert, seeing, now and again, the tents of a few wandering Arabs or an ostrich or gazelle. After much hardship, he reached Syene and travelled once more along the banks of the Nile to Cairo. And now the fancy seized him to revisit Asia Minor, see Southern Russia and Turkestan, and get to India over the Hindu Kûsh. He retraced his old route through Palestine and Syria as far as Latakia. There he embarked on a Genoese vessel for Alâia, on the south coast of Asia Minor, which he calls “Rûm, because it belonged of yore to the Romans; and, to this day many of them dwell here under the protection of the Moslems.” He was now farther north than he had been before. One of the petty Sultans gave him and those who were with him the usual gracious greeting of the East, and furnished them with provisions. On reaching Anatolia, he found the country broken up into a multitude of contending States, many of these being held by Turkomans. The secular efforts of the keepers of wandering herds on the Steppes of Asia to settle in the rich, civilized countries of Europe and Asia had established the nomad in Persia and Asia Minor. Successive waves of conquest had swept over the fair lands south of the Oxus and Caspian, and, one by one, the victorious tribes settled down and received a higher civilization than their own from the subjugated tillers of the soil. But now the Empire of the Seljuk Turks was broken into fragments. Among the new rulers the Ottoman Turks, a small class of the tribe of Oghuz, were gradually and with difficulty gaining territory and power in Asia Minor. But there was as yet no hint that they were destined to inherit the Roman Empire of the East and to rule from the Danube to the Euphrates. Some of these little States were ancient provinces, with splendid and busy cities that rivalled Cairo in wealth and beauty. Some were carved out of the mouldering Byzantine Empire; some had been torn from Persia. There were also solitary fortresses and towns held by Turkomans who lived by rapine and piracy; and some States only preserved their precarious existence by the aid of a force of slaves who had been purchased or torn from their Christian parents in childhood and rigidly trained to military life. These Mamelukes were sent by their overlord, the Sultan of Egypt.

Yet the tradition of good government was far from being lost.The new rulers were vigorous and prudent.It would seem that one of the secrets of Ottoman success lay in that close supervision of subordinates which recent conquest requires.Consequently, on the whole, the country was prosperous.Batûta found that the ruler of one province never remained more than a month in one place.He moved about to inspect fortresses and see the condition of various districts.This man had besieged a city for twelve years.It is not without precedent in Moslem history for a siege to last longer than that of Troy; a fact which shows how little the husbandman was interfered with in these local wars.Even in France at the close of the Dark Ages, the tiller of the soil was safe from the invader of his field if he laid his hand on the plough.Batûta wandered at large, and was received in all places with warm hospitality.On landing, he took up his abode in the college of a sheik; and, on the second day, a poorly-clad man came to invite him and those who were with him to a feast. He wondered “how so poor a man could bear the charges of feasting us, who were many.” The sheik explained that the man was one of a society of silk-merchants who had a “cell” of their own. The guests were received with much courtesy and hospitality, and were liberally, supplied with money to cover their travelling expenses. Batûta learned that, in every town of the Turkomans, there was constituted a brotherhood of young men to supply strangers with food and other necessaries. A president, styled The Brother, was elected by those of the same trade, and even a foreigner might occupy the post. Each guild built a “cell” for itself in which food, a saddled steed, and all that might be wanted by travellers was stored. One of the duties of a President was to call daily on the members of his guild or brotherhood, and assist them in their diverse needs. Every evening the brotherhood returned his call; and whatsoever had not been needed was sold to support the “cell.” Should any traveller have arrived during the day, he was entertained. Otherwise “the brotherhood of youths” spent the evening in song, dance, and feast. On one occasion, directly Batûta’s party arrived at the gate of a city, two knots of men rushed to seize the bridles of their horses, and there was a struggle between them. This proceeding greatly alarmed the travellers, the more so that none of them was able to speak the language. But a man who knew Arabic came forward to assure them that there was no cause for fear. The rival parties were two brotherhoods disputing as to which should entertain the travellers. The antagonists cast lots, and the travellers went to the cell of one guild on the first day and to that of the other guild the next day. At another time, Batûta put up at the “cell” of one who was a member of a society of youths and who had a great number of disciples distinguished by their coarse ragged mantles and closely fitting hose. The petty Sultans, too, would provide horses or provisions.

The ruler of Bigni, a man proud of the possession of “a stone which had fallen from heaven,” gave Batûta gold, clothes, two horses and a slave.Although a severe Sunnite, our traveller shows no great religious hatred to Shiites, Jews, or Christians; but he liked to keep heretics and infidels in their place.He tells a story which is instructive as to the medical attainments of the Jew and the relations between Jew and Moslem.At Bigni an old man came and saluted the Sultan.All rose to do him honour.“He sat himself on the daïs, opposite the Sultan, and the readers of the Koran were below him.I asked the sage, ‘who is this sheik?’He smiled and kept silent; but when I asked again, he replied: ‘he is a Jewish physician of whom we all have need.That is why we rose when he came in.’Whereat I fumed, and said to him: ‘thou dog, son of a dog, how darest thou, a mere Jew, to seat thyself above the readers of the Koran?’I had raised my voice, and this astonished the Sultan, who asked why I had done so.The sage told him, and the Jew was humbled, and went away very much cast down.When we returned, the sage said to me: ‘well have you done!Allah bestow his blessing on thee!None other but thou had dared to speak thus to the Jew.Thou hast taught him to know his place.’”

Language-difficulty caused some embarassment during this long journey through Asia Minor; so an interpreter, who had done the pilgrimage to Mecca and who spoke Arabic, was engaged by Batûta’s party.But the Hadji cheated them abominably; so one day they asked him what he had stolen from them that day.The thief, quite unabashed told them the precise amount; “whereat we could but laugh and put up with it.”

Batûta embarked from Sinope, on the southern shore of the Euxine, for Sodaia, in the Crimea.Sodaia was one of the great ports of the world.Venice had established a factory there a century back, but had been ejected.The Crimea was chiefly in the hands of the Genoese, who were established at Caffa; but the Italian cities were in pressing danger of ejection and of losing their Levantine and Euxine trade. After suffering much distress on the voyage and “only just escaping from being drowned,” we find Batûta at Caffa; and for the first time suffering from the annoyance of those Christian bells which have been a nuisance, not merely to Moslems, but to the more sensitive among European ears from the days when they were perhaps necessary, yet when Rabelais objurgated them in his chapter on the “Island of bells,” to these modern times of clocks and watches. In all these cosmopolitan towns, each nation occupied a separate fortified quarter. The trade of Southern Russia was great; and one is surprised to find that horses were exported to India.

Batûta made across a land where the quiet air was no longer annoyed by the insistent clang which was an insult at once to his faith and his ears.He found Southern Russia a plain without hill or tree.Waggons might travel for six months through a green desert, the silence broken only by lowing of cattle, hoarse voice of an occasional herdsman, or languid stir of some collection of huts which passed for a town.Cattle were protected by severe laws severely enforced.“Should a beast be stolen, the thief must return it with nine more.If unable to furnish these, his children are taken into slavery; and, if he have no children, he is slaughtered like a sheep....The only fuel is dung.”

Batûta was bent on visiting Uzbek Khân, the powerful Tartar who now represented the dynasty founded by Chinghiz Khân, the blacksmith.Uzbek was one of the seven mightiest monarchs of the world, the others being the Sultan of the West; the Sultan of Egypt and Syria, the Sultan of the two Iraks (Persia and Mesopotamia), the Khân of Turkestan, the Sultan of India, and the Emperor of China.Our traveller hired a waggon, and, after many monotonous days, arrived at the camp of the Khân. He was amazed to behold “a city in motion; complete in its streets, mosques, and cooking houses.” Nor was he less bewildered at the consideration given to women by all men, from the Khân downwards, and at seeing them going about unveiled, yet “religious, charitable, and given to good works.” The wife of an Emir would ride, magnificently attired, in a coach. “Often she is accompanied by her husband; but one would take him for a mere attendant.” Uzbek Khân was “wont to give audience on Friday, his four wives, unveiled, sitting enthroned to right and left of him, a son on either side, and a daughter in front. Princes and Emirs are gathered around. People enter into the presence in order of rank. When a wife comes in, he takes her by the hand and leads her to her throne. Each wife has a separate abode; and not to visit these ladies is looked upon as a breach of good manners.” It is evident that the ancestral habits of a nomadic people were carefully preserved under conditions which were rapidly changing. The Sultan sent his visitor a horse, a sheep, and koumiss in a leathern bottle.

Batûta wished to see for himself the great change in the length of day and night which takes place as one travels northward.So Uzbek sent him to far-distant Bulgar, on the Volga, a place in the latitude of Newcastle.Here he was told of a “Land of Darkness,” which lay forty days’ journey to the North.“Traders alone go there; and only in big companies.Dogs draw them over the ice in sledges; and the travellers must take all food and wood for fuel with them.The dogs are fed before anyone, and experienced dogs, who have done the journey several times, are chosen to lead the pack.On arriving at the proper place, each trader puts down his goods and retires.Next day, he finds furs put down as barter.Should he be content with these, he carries them off; but should he not be satisfied, he leaves them where they are, and more are added.But sometimes the natives will take back their own goods, and leave those of the traders. The traders never see anyone, and know not whether they deal with human beings or with demons.” Strange as this practice seems, there is other evidence that exchange of goods was made in this way in very high latitudes. Sledge-dogs were used very much farther south than they are to-day. Batûta speaks of the Russians as being “Christians with red hair, blue eyes, ugly, faithless, and rich in silver shrines.”

When Batûta returned to Uzbek, he went on to Astrakhan with him.“Here the Sultan dwells in very cold weather....The city is on one of the great rivers of the world (the Volga), which is crossed by laying thousands of bundles of hay on the ice.”

Now, the third of Uzbek’s four wives was a daughter of the Christian Emperor of Constantinople. History makes no mention of this lady; but there is no reason to doubt the fact, however surprising; for, since 1265 A.D. the Byzantine Emperor had more than once given a natural daughter or legitimate sister in marriage to powerful Mongolian Sovereigns, in order to get their support against the encroaching Turks of Asia Minor.

This particular lady was expecting her confinement and desired to return home for the event.She had requested the Khân to allow her to do so, and he had sanctioned the journey.Batûta saw an opportunity of seeing the famous Christian metropolis, if the Khân would allow him to join the escort.Such a petition from a foreign stranger naturally aroused suspicion as to his motives; but Batûta was skilful in allaying this; and we find him setting forth with a parting gift from the Khân of a fine dress, several horses, and cash.Even the Khân’s ladies and his sons and daughters gave him presents.The princess was escorted by 500 horse and 4,500 foot.The Khân, accompanied by his head-wife and heir-apparent rode with her the first stage; the heir-apparent and his suite went on the next stage of a journey that took two months. For some reason or other a very round-about route was chosen; first a waterless, uninhabited waste was crossed; then the Caucasus approached to within a day’s march. When a border-fortress was reached, the escort returned; and now the real motive of the lady becomes discernable. The unhappy woman had been the victim of state-craft, a puppet danced off to a semi-barbarian husband in the interests of Constantinople. In spite of the respect paid to women in her new abode, she was heartily sick of Tartar discomfort and Moslem ways. Accustomed to the luxurious ease and refinements of the Byzantine Court, she loathed the uncouth manners of a half-tamed people and their rough life. She sighed for the amenities of her father’s palace and the high civilization of his city. She left her travelling mosque at the fortress, drank wine, and is said to have eaten swine’s flesh. From Batûta’s point of view, she relapsed into infidelity; yet he has no bitter word to cast at her. When a day’s journey from her native city, a younger brother came to meet her with 5,000 cavalry, all in shining armour. Next day the heir-apparent arrived with 10,000 cavalry, and when quite near to Constantinople, the greater part of the population turned out, decked in their best, and shouting so that it was difficult to decide whether they or the drums made most noise. The parents came forth from the gate in full royal state, and the poor released princess threw herself on the ground before them, kissed it, and even kissed the hooves of their horses. All the bells of Constantinople were a-ringing, and the royal party entered the city with glittering pomp.

Batûta was unwilling to enter “Istambûl” without the Emperor’s special sanction; it was not too safe a place for a Moslem.Andronicus Palæologus the Younger gave him a safe-conduct; but he was searched for concealed arms at the fifth gate—a practice which, afterwards, he found to obtain in India.As he passed through the gateways the guards muttered: “Saracens! Saracens!” And Saracens they had indeed occasion to hold in mortal horror and dread.

Our pilgrim-traveller gets sadly muddled about names and dates just here.Evidently, he derived the information he gives us from a Jew, who acted as interpreter, and who either spoke Arabic imperfectly or heartily enjoyed “pulling his leg.”And as to dates, just here, Batûta’s memory fails him a little.He was told that the Pope of Rome paid an annual visit to Santa Sophia, and was received with the greatest veneration and ceremonial.And he calls the Emperor Andronicus, “George.”Andronicus plied him with eager questions as to Jerusalem and the Holy Places of Palestine.He only saw the outside of Santa Sophia.

Now, the Princess made open objection to return to her husband, and had her will.She gave Batûta a money-present for his services; but the Byzantine Empire was in decay, and, to his loss in exchange, the coins debased.He returned Eastward with a small escort, and met Uzbek Khân at Sara.We read in Dan Chaucer how

Nothing will content him but to see those famous cities beyond the Oxus, and Balk, with its great mosque of the precious pillars, before he proceeds to India.He travels 40 days through a desert.The whole district is one vast desolation; and he tells us how Chinghiz Khân, the blood-stained blacksmith, a conquering hero, a strict Moslem, and therefore “a man of liberal mind,” subdued district after district until he was lord of China and the Middle East; how he carried off the youth of Bokhâra and Samarkand, Khôrasân and Irak, and slaughtered and pillaged so that he left nothing but ruin behind him.Batûta visited the Great Khân of Turkestan and more than one camp of petty rulers.

“The purple robe makes Emperors, not priests,” said Ambrose the Bishop of Milan to the Emperor Theodosius; and the Emperor remarked how hard it was for a ruler to meet with an outspoken and unfearing man.Batûta tells us of an amusing incident which indicates, not merely how an imam could be outspoken to a king, but also that, if Mohammedanism had admitted of a sacerdotal hierarchy, the same exercise of priestly authority which cast Theodosius prostrate and weeping before the Altar at Milan and kept Heinrich shivering in the snows of Canossa, while awaiting the condescension of Hildebrand, would have obtained in the Moslem as in the Christian world.When Tirim Siri Khân wished prayers to be delayed until he should come to the mosque, the imam bade the messenger return to the Khân and ask him whether prayers were ordered of God or of him, and commanded the muezzin to summon the faithful as usual.After the second prostration the Khân arrived, meekly remained at the doorway, and joined in the prayers.When worship was over, he grasped the hand of the imam, who laughed heartily, and the twain sat together afterwards, Batûta being with them.The Khân told the traveller to declare to his countrymen how the Ruler of the Turkomans had sat with a poor man of the poorest Persians.This worthy imam lived by the labour of his hands, and refused all the gifts his sovereign offered him.No wonder that warm friendship sprang up between these two men, and that both were respected and obeyed.But greater regard was paid to the statutes than to this monarch even; for, after Batûta left, Tirim Siri broke a law laid down by his grandfather and therefore was deposed.

In one province he found “a laudable practice.A whip is hung up in every mosque, and whoever stays away from worship is beaten by the imam before all the congregation, and fined to boot, the fine going towards the upkeep of the mosque.”The time came when Batûta, clothed with authority, itched to exercise it in the same praiseworthy way.

Batûta now visits Herat, turns north-westward to Meshed, the capital of Khôrasân and holy city of the Shiites, thence travels to Jam, the birthplace of Jami, the Persian poet, and at Tus finds the tomb of the Caliph Haroun-al-Raschid, who died there when on a military expedition.Now, Haroun-al-Raschid was a Sunnite; so the orthodox “place lighted candles on his grave, but the followers of Ali (Shiites) are wont to give it a kick.”One recalls the story of how, when the Indian Emperor had his attention drawn to a dog defiling the grave of a heretic, he remarked that “the beast resembles orthodoxy.”Heterodox or orthodox, according to point of view, here were flourishing colleges filled with students, and saintly men dwelling in secluded cells.To work miracles has always been a distinction of the saint; but the Eastern saint was also permitted to live on to an age incredibly ripe.Batûta is always running across some man of the age attained by old Parr, and upwards.A century and a half is a moderate number of years for these holy beings, and Batûta accepts it as veridical; especially when corroborative evidence is given.But three and a half centuries claimed by a man who is no Struldbrug, but looks not more than fifty, staggers even him.The impostor assures his visitor that every century he grows a fresh crop of hair and cuts a new set of teeth, and that he had been a Râja who was buried at Multân in the Punjâb.“I very much doubted as to what he might really be; and I do so to this day.”

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CHAPTER VI

AN EASTERN DESPOT

He waited forty days for the snows to melt on the “Hindu Kûsh—the Slayer of the Hindus, so called because most of the slaves brought from India die here of the bitter cold thereof.” The Afghans were at that time subjects of the Khân of Turkestan (Transoxiana); a turbulent, violent race, impatient of the slightest curb. Bandits attacked the party he joined in the Kâbul pass; but bow and arrow kept them at a distance. Fierce invaders had poured down the mountain passes from Afghanistan from the end of the twelfth century and established a Mohammedan Empire at Delhi.

Batûta passed into Sind.At the Indian border the usual written description of his personal appearance and the object of his visit was sent to the Sultan.There was a system of stations at a short distance from each other, and couriers of the Sultan went to and fro, some on horseback, some on foot.To secure rapid transit, each courier was provided with bells attached to a whip, so as to announce his approach to a station and to warn the courier there to be ready to go on with the royal despatch.

Now, the Mohammedan Sultan of Northern India was a striking illustration of the fact that humanity is not necessarily coupled with generosity.Mohammed Tughlak was renowned throughout the Moslem world for his lavish munificence; but the cold-blooded cruelty of the despot was not less great than his bounty.Batûta not merely wished to see India; he hoped to achieve lucrative establishment at the Moslem Court.At Multân he found a body of adventurers, who sought to place their talents at the service of the Sultan, and awaited his invitation to court.Any shipwrecked sailor, even, had only to make his way to Mohammed Tughlak to be relieved.Batûta has tales of him which we may believe at our pleasure. The Sultan told one of his courtiers to go to the treasury and take away as much gold as he could carry. He took so much that he fell under its weight. The Sultan ordered the coins to be gathered together, weighed, and sent to him. Once he had one of his Emirs put into a balance, and gave him his weight in gold, kissing him, and telling him to bestow alms for his soul’s welfare. He kissed the feet of a “theologian and gatherer of traditions,” and presented him with a golden vase filled with gold coins.

On the way, Batûta saw one of the three brothers whom the Sheik at Alexandria had prophesied he should meet, and found him “a man very much broken by temptations of the devil.He would not allow any one to touch his hand or even to draw near him; and, should anyone’s garb chance to touch his, he washed it immediately.”On the road from Multân to Delhi, Batûta was most hospitably received by the Emirs.But Northern India was no more reduced to order by the Mohammedan Sultan than by the Emperor Sîlâditya in Hiuen-Tsiang’s time.Between Multân and Delhi, while travelling with a party of twenty-two, Batûta found two horse and twenty foot opposing their progress.Our pilgrim was a many-sided man, quite capable of taking his share in a fight.The robbers lost one of their horsemen and twelve of their foot, and then fled from the field.

When Ibn Batûta arrived at the Moslem capital, which was ten miles to the south of the Delhi of our day, he found that the Sultan was not there.But great honour was done to the man whose fame as theologian, jurist, traveller and three-fold hadji had preceded him.He was received and entertained by the Sultan’s Mother and the Vizier, and received a welcome present of money in return for the presents he had brought with him.

A month and a half after his arrival a child of one of his numerous marriages died.She was a little less than a year old.“The vizier gave her funeral honours as if she had been a child of high rank in that country, with incense, rose-water, readers of the Koran, and panegyrists. And the vizier paid all the costs thereof, giving money to the leaders and food to the poor. This was done by the Sultan’s orders. And the Dowager Sultana sent for the mother of the child, and gave her valuable dresses and ornaments; which was much to her solace.”

News now came that the Sultan was drawing near; so the vizier and others set forth to meet him.Everybody, the adventurers in search of employment included, bore presents to the palace, of which the sentries at the palace-gateway took note.When the Sultan arrived, these gifts were spread out before him, and the travellers were presented to him in order of rank.Batûta was received with special marks of approval.The Sultan graciously condescended to take his hand, promised to see to his interests, and gave him cloth of gold which had adorned his own person.Each visitor had a horse and silver-saddle sent him, and was appointed either judge or writer.Batûta was made Judge of Delhi, with a stipend and the rents of three villages attached to his office.When the messengers brought news of these appointments, the new functionaries were expected to kiss the hooves of their horses, go to the palace, and invest themselves with their robes of office.

Batûta gives an account of the Sultan which is confirmed by Ferishta, the Moslem historian.Mohammed was a typical Oriental sovereign of the first order, that is to say, a man of letters and learning, “approachable, one of the most bountiful of men, splendid in his gifts (where he took a fancy).”But despotism breeds tyranny, and tyranny, brutality.“Notwithstanding his humility, justice, kindness to the poor, and marvellous open-handedness, he was swift to shed blood.Hardly a day went by without someone being slaughtered before the gates of his palace.Often have I seen people suffer there, and their bodies left where they fell.Once, as I rode up, my horse plunged and quivered with fear.I looked ahead, and saw something white lying on the ground.I asked what it might be. One who was with me replied: ‘it is the trunk of a man who has been dismembered.’ It made no difference whether the offence were great or small; the punishment ordered by the Sultan was the same. He spared none on account of his learning, his upright character, or his position. Daily, hundreds of prisoners were brought to the audience-chamber, arms chained to neck, and feet pinioned. Some were killed, some tortured, some severely beaten. He sat in his Audience Hall every day, Fridays excepted, and had everybody in prison brought before him. But Friday was a day of respite for them; then they kept calm and purified themselves.

“The Sultan had a brother.Never have I seen a finer man.The monarch suspected that he had plotted against him.He questioned him concerning this; and, for fear of being put to the torture, the brother made avowal.But, in fact, whoever should deny any charge of this kind which the Sultan might choose to make would most assuredly be put to the torture; and death is usually chosen.The Sultan had his brother’s head cut off in the middle of the courtyard, and, as is the custom, there it remained three days.This man’s mother had been stoned to death in the same place two years before; for she had confessed to adultery or some debauchery....On one occasion, when I was present, some men were brought forward and charged with having conspired to kill the vizier.They were sentenced to be thrown to the elephants.These beasts are trained to put an end to culprits, their feet being shod with steel with a sharp edge to it.They are guided by riders, take up their victim with their trunks, hurl him up into the air, thrust him between their fore-feet, and do to him just what the riders bid them, and that is whatever the Sultan has ordered.If the command be to cut the victims to pieces, the elephant shall do this with his tools, and then shall cast the pieces to the crowd gathered around; but if it be to leave him, he is flayed before the monarch, his skin stuffed with hay, and his flesh given to dogs.”

This genial sovereign had craftily contrived to bring about the death of his father and a brother by the collapse of a pavilion.But the reign of every Sultan was polluted by parricide or fratricide in the frantic struggle for the throne.And, even more than has been the case throughout history, all the ostentation, luxury, and culture of the Court, the powerful, and the wealthy, was as fine meal ground from the ear which the humble had sown and reaped.The people were crushed, enslaved, outraged and despoiled.

A case was brought before our judge which reveals that the trial by ordeal, of which Hiuen-Tsiang told us, was still employed. A woman reputed to be a Goftar, that is to say, a witch who could kill anyone by a glance, was brought before Batûta on the charge of having murdered a child.Not knowing what to do, he sent her on to the vizier, who ordered four large water-vessels to be tied to her, and the whole bundle to be thrown into the Jumna.Had she sunk, she would have been deemed innocent and pulled out.Alas!she floated; so she was taken away to be burned.

One day, two Yogis, master and disciple, arrived at the Sultan’s court.Their heads and armpits were bare, the hair having been removed by means of some kind of powder.They were received with much respect; and Batûta was treated to an exhibition of that Eastern skill in jugglery which astonished all ancient travellers.The disciple assumed the shape of a cube, rose in the air, and floated over the heads of the spectators.Our judge was so frightened at this uncanny trick that he fainted.When he came to, the disciple was still up above his head.The head-conjurer then cast a sandal to the ground.It rebounded, hit the cube, which descended, and lo!there was the disciple again.Batûta’s heart beat at such a rate that the Sultan ordered a powerful drug to be given him, and told him that he should have been shewn more astounding things, but that he feared for his wits. Probably, however the illusion was produced, our traveller saw something very much like what he describes. Marco Polo and other old travellers tell of the astounding feats they saw, and Jehangir, fourth in succession of the Great Moguls, devotes several pages of his diary to a careful record of many similar marvels which he would seem to have observed closely.9 We shall hear of something stranger yet, which befel Batûta in China.

Our new-made judge was not only a restless being, but one possessed by an immoderate desire to do things on a big scale.His qualities were exaggerate, and a virtue tended to swell into an iniquity.One pious pilgrimage to the Holy Places did not suffice him: he must visit them again and again.We shall see how fully he availed himself of the liberty in marriage, divorce, and concubinage accorded by his creed.Egoism was a strong element in his character.He could not set bounds to his expenditure.In a word, he borders on megalomania.In a short time, his debts are four and a half times his total income.His excuse is that he was ordered to attend the Sultan in an expedition to put down an insurrection.Many servants are required in India; but his retinue was immense.He was ingenious enough to escape from his difficulties.Mohammed Tughlak plumed himself on his real or supposed proficiency in Persian and Arabic and on his patronage of letters.Batûta went to him with a panegyric in Arabic so adroitly expressed that he charmed His Majesty.Then Batûta laid bare his distress.The Sultan paid his debts and dismissed him with the same warning which Mr. Micawber gave David Copperfield.The judge was excused from accompanying his Master, and was given charge of a tomb and the theological college attached to it.

Encouraged by the Sultan’s liberality, perhaps incited by his example in prodigality, and untaught by his recent dilemma, he arranges everything on a stupendous scale.“I set up 150 readers of the Koran, 80 students, 8 repeaters, a lecturer, 80 conventuals, an imam, muezzins, reciters selected for their fine rendering, eulogists, scribes to note down absentees, and ushers.All of these were men of breeding.And I set up an establishment of menials; such as footmen, cooks, messengers, water carriers, betel-servers, swordsmen, javelin-men, umbrella-carriers, hand-washers, criers, and other officials—460 of them, all told.The Sultan commanded me to supply 12 measures of meal and an equal quantity of meat daily at the tomb.This seemed to me a pitifully small amount....I made it 35 measures of meal, and 35 of meat, and sugar, sugar-candy, butter, and fawfel-nut in due proportion.Thereby I fed all comers.”

There was some excuse for the expenditure on food.Famine is the recurrent curse of countries with imperfect means of transport, and “the land suffered from famine at this time.Thus suffering was relieved; and fame of it borne afar.”But Batûta does not conceal his having used money which his friends lent him during his stay at Delhi.Indeed he vilifies them for expecting him to return any part of it.He tells his tale in the tone of a man who believes himself to have been treated ungenerously and unjustly.

Later on in his narrative, he has occasion to refer to the fact that at some time during the few years of his residence at Delhi he added to the number of his wives by marrying the daughter of the Emir of Mobar, in Southern India.“She was a religious woman, who would spend the whole night in meditation and prayer.She could read, but not write.She bore me a female child; but what is become of either of them is beyond my ken.”The indelicacy of the dress of women in Delhi shocked him: “they merely cover the face, and the body from the navel downwards only.” He tried to get them to robe themselves completely, and failed.

It seems that the capricious Sultan had placed much confidence in a certain holy man; but suspicion of the sheik’s fidelity was aroused, and spies were set to take note of his visitors.Among his friends and visitors was Batûta.Everybody on the list was ordered to appear at the fatal portal.Batûta thought his last hour had come and betook himself to his prayers; he repeated “God is our succour and exceeding help” no less than 33,000 times in a single day; he fasted for four days, taking nothing but water and expecting the executioners every moment.He alone escaped the fatal scimitar.

He had seen enough of Imperial caprice to know that respite was not security, or innocence a lasting defence.He resigned his office and went to a worker of miracles, “the saint and phœnix of his time,” who was one of his friends.He gave all that he possessed to holy men; put on the robe of an ascetic, and ate nothing but rice.But the blindfold goddess had him on her wheel, and was to give it many a turn yet.Five months passed, and then the Sultan sent for him and gave him a gracious reception.But he deemed it wise to return to his rigorous life, and was more severe in it than before.Yet forty more days passed, and then the Sultan again commanded his presence.

There was now a much greater trade with China than in the time of Hiuen-Tsiang.An Embassy, headed by a high mandarin, had come from China (A.D. 1342) with presents of 100 male slaves, 50 slave-girls, rich dresses, quivers of gold, and jewelled swords. In a certain lower reach of the Himalaya was a plain which had been overrun by the Moslem conquerors. Once a Buddhist temple stood there; and Chinese pilgrims were wont to journey across Thibet to pray at the sacred spot. Moreover the inhabitants of the district were cut off from their wonted toil in Thibetan fields beyond the border. The place was secured by Nature from any attack from the North; and the Great Khân of China begged that restrictions should be removed and permission given for the temple to be rebuilt. The Sultan was willing to grant the request on certain pecuniary conditions, but he cast about for some one to accompany the returning embassy and represent him at the Chinese Court. Who so suitable as Batûta, a man of the world, experienced in travel, highly educated, and sharp-witted? His innocence was established. Such a degree of asceticism, so long endured, was proof of piety. The Sultan ordered him to go. The garb of the ascetic was thrown off. He would feel more secure in China than at Delhi.

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CHAPTER VII

PERILS BY LAND AND SEA

Our ambassador sets off with the returning mission attended by two favourites of the Sultan, and a guard of 1,000 horse. He has charge of gifts which far surpass the Chinese presents—100 horses of the best breed, richly caparisoned, 100 Hindu singing and dancing girls, robes of rich brocade, jewelled arms, instruments of gold and silver, silks and stuffs, and 1,700 rich dresses.

He has not travelled 100 miles from Delhi when he finds a district in revolt against the Mohammedan conquerors.The Hindus are besieging a city; the cavalry attending the embassy rushes at the investing forces, loses many men, but leaves not an enemy alive.The news is sent to the Sultan, and a halt is made for his instructions to arrive.Batûta is sitting in the grateful shade of a garden when word comes that a fresh body of Hindus is attacking a village hard by.He rides off with an escort to see how he may help.The insurgents are already fleeing from a hot pursuit, and he finds himself left with only five others and a few mounted men.His horse gets its fore-feet wedged between some stones, and he has to dismount; his companions ride off, and he finds himself alone.Suddenly, two score of the enemy’s horse appear and ride at him.He is stripped to the skin, bound, and threatened with death.He is unable to talk the language of his captors, is kept a captive during two days, and then they ride away.He shuffles off to a neighbouring jungle, and hides there.He cautiously tries every foot-track to find that not one of them but leads to some enemy village or to some village in ruins.He keeps himself alive by sucking wild fruit and chewing leaves.Seven days have passed, and he is quite exhausted, when he sees “a black man, carrying a small water-vessel and walking by aid of an iron-tipped staff.” The man is a Mohammedan, and gives him water and pulse, which he has with him. Batûta tries to walk with him; but he is too weak and faint; his feet totter, and he falls to the ground. The “black man” throws him across his shoulders; all consciousness is lost, and he comes to himself at the Imperial gateway one daybreak, the East aglow with the rising sun. That good Samaritan, the “black man,” stands out in bright relief from a background of crime and cruelty and shadows of feet swift to shed blood.

Mohammed Tughlak received Batûta more kindly than ever, gave him handsome compensation, and commanded him to return to the Embassy.On his way to Cambay, we hear more of Yogi magicians and how they will remain long time without food.“I have seen, in the city of Mangalore, a Moslem who had learned of these folk.A sort of platform was set up for him; and thereon he had stayed 25 days, neither eating nor drinking.Thus did I leave him; and I know not how long he kept there afterwards.It is said that they make up pills, and, after swallowing one of them, can do without food or drink.They foretell hidden things.The Sultan honours them and admits them to his society.Some among them eat vegetable food only; and these are the greater number.There are among them those who can slay a man by a glance at him.The common people hold that, if the chest of the dead man be opened, no heart is to be found within; for it has been consumed.Women do this in the main, and such an one is called a hyæna.”

Batûta’s chief interest was in Islam; but he noted natural products carefully and was alive to the odd.North of the Hindu Kûsh he had seen a woefully obese man; and now, on this 1,500 mile journey to Calicut, he came across the ruler of a small State, “a black giant,” who thought little of devouring a whole sheep at a sitting.

He took ship near Goa, and the craft ran along the Malabar coast, “the land of black pepper.” Twelve kinglets ruled as many states in Malabar at that time, and each king had an army of from 5,000 to 50,000 men at his command. Many ancient polyandric practices were retained; which explains why each Râja was succeeded by a sisters’ son. No landing was made until a king’s son had been handed over as a pledge of safety. Many Arab traders had settled in the ports, and become wealthy. Punishment, swift and severe, followed on the smallest infringement of meum and tuum. We are told how a Hindu noble, out riding with his father-in-law, who was no less a personage than the Râja, picked up a mango which had dropped from an overhanging tree. The Râja ordered that both he and the mango should be cut into two halves, and half of the mango and half of the culprit laid on either side of the public way precisely where the enormity had been done. One may suspect that the son-in-law was not wholly persona grata to the despot.

The Embassy had to tide over three months at Calicut awaiting the season for the sailing of the fleet of junks from China.There were thirteen of them at Calicut, and they also traded to Hili and Quilon.He tells us that the biggest junks were as floating cities.They would carry a crew of 1,000 men, whereof 400 were soldiers.The junk was worked by oars and sails of bamboo-matting, slung from masts varying in number from three to twelve, according to the size of the junk.Ten to thirty men stood to pull at each oar.Garden-herbs and ginger were grown on deck, and on it, too, were houses built for the chief officers and their wives.The quarters of the junk were three-fold, fastened together by spikes.Each junk of the biggest size was accompanied by three tenders of progressively diminishing proportions.Needless to say, the commander of a junk was a very important functionary.Often more than one junk would be owned by a single Chinaman.But then, “truly the Chinese are the wealthiest people on earth.”

Our ambassador sent his servants, slave-girls and baggage on board; but the cabin was too small to hold both concubines and luggage; so the skipper advised him to hire a kakam or junk of the third size. This he did on a Thursday, the kakam took in its cargo, and he remained on shore the next day for public worship.

During the night, the terror of the sea fell on them all. A violent storm came on, and the waters shook the land. Some of the junks contrived to get away from the perilous neighbourhood of the shore to more open water; but one of them was wrecked, and only a few swimmers managed to escape. The kakam, with all his worldly goods and slave-concubines in it, had disappeared; but it had been seen making for the open.The body of an envoy was washed ashore, with the skull smashed in.A guardian Eunuch was also cast up, a nail driven right through the brain from temple to temple.Down came the Zamorin to the scene of disaster, Comedy attendant on Tragedy, for he braved the tempest clad with a loin-cloth, the scantiest of head-gear, and a necklace of jewels, but the insignium of royalty, the umbrella, was somehow held up over his sacred head.Batûta cast himself on his prostration-carpet, which was all that was left to him, excepting ten pieces of gold and his servant, a freed slave, who immediately made off.Some pious people gave him small coin, which he kept as treasure, for it would bring blessing with it.

We are told of the noble deed of a simple Moslem sailor during this great storm.“There was a girl on board who was the favourite of a merchant.The merchant offered ten pieces of gold to anyone who should save her.A sailor, hailing from Hormuz, did save her; but he refused the reward, saying, ‘I did it for the love of God.’”

The junk which held the precious gifts for China was seen to go down outside the port; and Batûta heard that the little boat which held all his slave-concubines and worldly goods had contrived to gain the open sea, and might conceivably put in at Quilon. He set off at once, and arrived there after a ten days’ journey. He found the Chinese Embassy there. They had suffered shipwreck, but their junk had not broken up and was being refitted.

It did not require the advice proferred him by his co-religionists to deter him from returning to the capricious, passionate lord of Delhi.He bethought him of Jamâl Oddîn, ruler of Honowar, a man of sense and understanding, whom he had visited on his way to Calicut.It casts a pleasant ray on the Mohammedan occupation of India, that there were no fewer than 44 schools set up in the busy little capital of a small State, and that of these no fewer than 11 were for girls.Now Jamâl Oddîn knew the uncertain temper of the Lord of India quite as well as Batûta, and did not give him too hearty a welcome.So to appease offended Heaven, or to rehabilitate himself by an evidence of piety, he repaired to a mosque and read the Koran from end to end once, and ultimately twice, a day.Now, there were 52 ships being fitted out to attack the island of Sindâbûr; and Jamâl evidently thought that Batûta might prove useful, for he commanded him to accompany him on this expedition.Batûta tried to read the future by a time-honoured method of divination.He opened the Koran at random, and his eye fell on a promise of Allah to aid his servant.This was satisfactory to Jamâl Oddîn as well as to himself.

After strenuous resistance Sindâbûr was carried by assault, and Batûta, who was something of a warrior, received a slave-girl, clothing and other presents from his patron. He remained on the island with Jamâl Oddîn for some months, and then got permission to go to Calicut. For the Chinese fleet would be returning to India by this time, and he might get news of his little junk. At Calicut, he learned that his kakam had reached China, that his property had been divided up, and that his pretty concubine had died on the voyage. “I felt very much grief for her.” He went back to the island to find the city besieged by Hindus.

Now he had heard marvellous things concerning the Maldives, an archipelago of small islands lying S.S.E.of India, near the equator.The inhabitants, under British rule to-day, had accepted Islam.He found that before he or anyone was allowed to land he must show himself on deck; “for although the islands are multitudinous, each lies close to its neighbour, and folk knew one another by sight.”He speaks of the inhabitants as “pious, peaceable, and chaste.They never wage war.Prayers are their only weapons.Indian pirates do not alarm them; nor do they punish robbers; for they have learned that sudden and grievous ill will come to evil-doers.When any of the pirate-ships of infidel Hindus pass by these islands, whatsoever is found is taken, nor will anyone stand out.”But, in spite of the moral reflection indulged in by the islanders, Batûta traces their policy of non-resistance to physical feebleness.And “there is one exception to it.Should a single lemon be taken woe befals the offender.He is punished and forced to listen to a homily.The natives delight in perfumes and in bathing twice a day, which the heat forces them to do; yet trees give delicious shade.Their trade is in ropes, which they make of hemp, and which are used for sewing together the timbers of ships of India and Yemen; for if a ship strike against a rock, the hemp allows of its yielding, and so saves it from going to pieces, which is not the case when iron nails are used.Shells are used for coin, and palm-leaves are used for all writing, except for copying out the Koran; and the instrument used has a sharp point.”

Batûta sailed among these islands during ten days, and took up his abode on one, the sovereign of which was a woman.For the lady’s husband had died, leaving no male issue; so she married her vizier who, in reality, ruled.Batûta took the full license accorded in Islam. He married the four legal wives permitted, and took to himself some concubines also, “all pleasant in conversation and of great beauty.” He must have divorced his previous wives before being able to do this. Marriage in the Maldive Islands was facile and cheap. Only a small dowry was demanded for a handsome woman; but it was required that the stranger should divorce the wife on leaving the land, and by no means take her with him. But, should he not desire to marry, there was no difficulty in getting a woman to cook for him at a very small wage. Wives were less companionable here than in most parts of the world, since women and men took their meals apart; nor could Batûta get his women-folk to break the custom of their country—a custom which Varthema speaks of, nearly two centuries later, as obtaining in South West India. Batûta had been appointed judge, and another thing that troubled him was the irregular attendance of the lax Moslems of his island at the mosque. He was very eager that such flagrant non-observance of religious duty should be duly punished; and he urged that the best way would be literally to whip the recalcitrants to attend on public worship.

Now Batûta’s wives had powerful relatives.The sister of one of his wives at Delhi was wife to the Emir of Mobar; to whom, therefore, Batûta was doubly related.He had become a power in his island, and the vizier grew jealous and suspicious.Might not the stranger conspire to bring an army over from the coast of Coromandel?When Batûta saw what was going on, he acted at once.“I divorced all my wives,” he says, “save one, who had a young child, and I went on to other islands of that great multitude of them.”From one of these, he shipped for Mobar; but the wind changed, and he was driven to the coast of Ceylon and in no small danger of drowning.The governor of the port came sailing by, and refused a landing; for he was no friend to Moslem skippers.Batûta won him over by telling him that he was on his way to visit the Sovereign of Mobar, that he was related to him by marriage, and that the whole cargo of the ship was intended as a present for that potentate. The Ceylonese Râja of the district was on good terms with his Moslem brother of Mobar, so Batûta was allowed to land. He found, like Marco Polo, that Ceylon was divided among four kinglets. He of the district soon sent for him, and gave him hospitality. He admired the famous herds of elephants, the troups of chattering monkeys, the pool of precious stones, and the luxuriant vegetation and glorious scenery of Ceylon. He scaled that iron chain, which still exists, to reach the top of Adam’s peak, and gives us the measure of the print of Adam’s foot, on hard rock; for in Ceylon, as elsewhere, supernatural vestiges are to be found. He visited Colombo and several other places in the island, and then set sail for the coast of Coromandel.

But, while crossing the strait, “the wind blew strong, and the ship was nearly swamped.Our skipper was a lubber.We were driven near perilous rocks, and barely escaped going to pieces; and then we got into shallow water.Our ship grated against the bottom, and we were face to face with death.Those on board threw all that they had into the sea, and bade farewell to one another.We cut down the mast and cast it onto the sea, and the sailors made a raft.The beach was eight miles off.I wanted to get down to the raft.I had two concubines and two friends with me.These latter exclaimed: ‘would you get down and leave us?’I had more regard to their safety than to my own; so I answered: ‘Get down, both of you, and the young girl whom I love with you.’My other young girl said: ‘I can swim.I will fix ropes to the raft and swim alongside these people.’My two comrades got down, one of the young girls being with them; and the other swam.The sailors tied ropes to the raft, and so helped her to swim.I gave them whatever of value I had in the way of jewels, amber, and other goods.They got to shore safe and sound, for the wind was in their favour. But I stayed aboard the ship. The skipper got to shore on a plank. The sailors took the building of four rafts in hand; but night came on before they had finished, and the ship was filling. I got up on the poop, and remained there until morning. Then several idolaters came to us in their barque. And we got safe to land.”

His connexion, the Emir, received him warmly.This potentate was about to attack a Hindu Power; and, while he was away on this expedition, Batûta travelled about.He tells us that he came across a fakir with long hair, who sat and ate in the society of seven foxes, and who kept a “happy family”—a gazelle and a lion together.The Emir was a ruthless tyrant, butchering women and children.Yet Batûta had no scruple in proposing a scheme to him for the conquest of the Maldives, where he had received so much kindness, and where he had left wives and paramours.But pestilence came and swept away most of the inhabitants of the district, including the Emir.The new ruler wanted to carry out the scheme for occupying the Maldives; but Batûta got fever badly, and very nearly died.When sufficiently recovered, he received permission to recuperate his energies by taking the long voyage round Cape Comorin to Honawar, where he wished to meet his old friend, Jamâl Oddîn, again.But, from time immemorial, the sea had been a no-mans province, infested by pirates; and the calling, continuous or accidental, of sea-thief was then as honourable as it was ancient.His ship was attacked by twelve Hindu craft, and taken after a severe battle.Batûta was stripped of his jewels and all his belongings, and set on shore with a pair of breeches on.He lost the notes of his travels with his other belongings.Out of the way of direct business, the robbers could be merciful, and there was no reason why they should take his life.He made his painful way to Calicut, and put up at a mosque—always the asylum of the indigent.Some of the lawyers and traders here had known him at Delhi. They clothed, fed, and housed him. What was he to do? He dared not return to Delhi. A son had been borne to him by a Maldive wife. He had a desire to see the child. The vizier was dead; but the queen had married again, and he wondered what sort of reception he should get. Paternal tenderness prevailed: “I went there on account of my little son; but when I had seen him, I left him with his mother, out of kindness to her.” He was hospitably entertained, but stayed a very few days. The new vizier furnished him with those provisions which every traveller by sea must purchase for himself and carry with him in the fourteenth century; and he set sail for Bengal, where he arrived after 43 days at sea (A.D. 1341).

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CHAPTER VIII

OFF TO MALAYSIA AND CATHAY

Batûta speaks of Bengal as the land of plenty. Everything was cheaper there than anywhere else in the wide world. He picked up a very beautiful slave-girl for a trifle. But the muggy climate made Bengal “a hell full of good things.” The Sultan was in revolt against his lord-paramount at Delhi; and as Batûta was a prudent person, held Mohammed Tughlak in wholesome awe, and could not predict the issue of the contest, he did not visit the Bengalese Court. He went up to the hill-country, half-way to the Himalayan giants, instead; for he desired to see an aged holy man who dwelt there, one who was reported to take no food excepting a little milk, and that only every ten days, and to sit upright all night. This old sheik was a seer, and foretold events which should befall his guest and which he declares really happened. Batûta was proud to be justly hailed as “the greatest traveller of all the Arabs.” He returned from the hills to visit a city not far from modern Dacca.

We next find him on the Indian Ocean, standing off the Nicobar Islands, probably because his ship needed a fresh supply of water.The inhabitants were fearful of strangers, would not allow any ship to sail in front of their houses, had the fresh water required brought down to the shore by elephants, and traded by signs; for nobody could speak their language.The men went about naked, and the women wore a girdle of leaves only.All were remarkable for the ugliness of their dog-like faces.Batûta was told that a man might be the husband of 30 or more of these beauties.Adultery was severely punished, the male offender being hanged, unless he could find a friend or a slave willing to suffer in his place; the woman being trampled to death and her body cast into the sea.The king came down to the beach with an escort of his relatives, all mounted on elephants. He wore a coloured silk turban and a goat-skin tunic, with the hair turned outwards, and he bore a short silver spear in his hand. The usual gifts were presented in dumb-show. “These folk work magic on any ship that withholds presents; and it is wrecked.”

Moslem traders called any part of the Malaysian Archipelago, Java; but the port to which our traveller next came was really in Sumatra.The Emir of the Mohammedan sovereign received the visitors with customary Eastern munificence and gave them rich dresses.Our traveller speaks highly of the Sultan as being a cultivated man who loved the society of the learned and enjoyed discussion with them.A modern writer says that the humblest man he ever knew was a duke, and Batûta might have said the same of some rulers.The humility of the Sultan of Sumatra was so great that he walked to prayers every Friday!Batûta took a long journey inland, and tells us of frankincense, clove, nutmeg, mace, and other products of Sumatra, and of how a man is sacrificed by the natives at the foot of the camphor-tree to ensure its good bearing.

He was eager to reach China—that land of strange ways and peculiar civilization in Farthest East.The complaisant Sultan gave him passage in one of his own junks, provided him with stores for the voyage, and ordered a guide-interpreter to attend on him.In three and a half weeks, he came to a place which he calls Kakula, and which may have been on the mainland.Here he was well received by the pagan king, and chanced to be present at a curious proof of devotion to royalty.“One day, a man made a long speech, not one word of which I understood.He held a knife in his hand, which he grasped firmly, and cut off his own head, and it fell to the ground.”This sounds incredible; but it is a fact.The feat was done by means of apparatus.A sickleshaped knife was attached to a stirrup.The suicide placed his foot in the latter, gave it a sharp jerk, and the knife shore off his head.Our traveller was told that the deed was done to make manifest the great loyalty of the victim, and that his father and grandfather had made the same praiseworthy exit from life in honour of the king’s father and grandfather.Their families received compensation from the kings.A similar case of self-execution was authentically recorded in the last century.

The Eastern Ocean was so calm that the junk had to be towed by boats.Marco Polo had the same experience in these seas.Batûta touched at Kailiki, a port of Tawalisi, probably Tonquin; but no one is quite sure where this land lay.Even the Sulu Islands have been suggested!The king was as powerful as the Emperor of China.His people were idolaters after the manner of the Turks, and Batûta reports a conversation with his Amazonian daughter, introducing a few words of their language.This princess could write, but not speak Arabic.Some discredit has been thrown on this part of his narrative, mainly on the ground of language, but also because what he has to say about her recalls very ancient classical stories.But we must recollect that Batûta is relying on his memory at a time when the events belonged to a far-distant past; that his work was dictated; and that it was edited by the Secretary to the Sultan of Fez.He confesses that he did not understand very well what the princess said to him.And the language she spoke may have struck him as like Turkish in sound, and hence is given in some sort of imitation of that tongue.The more one studies ancient travellers and pilgrims the more assured one becomes of their essential sincerity and the general accuracy of their observation.We know very little indeed about the Nomadic penetration of the Far East.That this princess was able to write a little Arabic, would seem to show that there was considerable Arab trade with Tawalisi.

This lady was governor of the port, a post which her father had given her as the reward of her powers in battle.For, once, when her father’s army was on the point of defeat, she routed the enemy, and brought back the head of their leader.She commanded an army, whereof one regiment was of women.Neighbouring princes had wished to marry her, but had withdrawn their pretensions; for she insisted that first they should overcome her in the lists; and they were afraid of the ignominy of being vanquished by a woman.She was amazed at the wealth of India, and said to Batûta: “I must conquer it for myself.”

Favourable winds and strenuous use of the oar brought the junk to China.He found that he had to pass through a stringent customs-house; and that a register was taken of all who left or arrived at a Chinese port.The captain was held responsible for his crew and passengers, and to this end an official list was essential.Should the traveller elect to stay with some other trader, his host took care of his money and goods, but was bound to return them at the close of the visit, with a deduction for necessary expenditure.Any deficiency must be made good.But the trader might, if he chose, put up at an inn.Batûta was surprised to find paper-currency.He admired the big poultry; but not the dirty cotton-clothes of the Chinese, nor their relish for the flesh of dogs and swine.As in Hiuen-Tsiang’s time, they burned their dead.A portrait of every traveller was taken without his knowing it, and thus, should an evil-doer try to escape from justice from one province to another, he was readily discovered.There were many Moslem traders in China; most of these had settled there; and Jews had found a home in China for eleven centuries.

Travelling in China was “safer and more agreeable than in any other land on earth.Although it takes nine months to cross this country, one need have no fear on the journey, even though one should have wealth in one’s care. There is an official with troops, both horse and foot, at each hostelry to keep matters in order. This official, accompanied by his scribe, comes to the hostelry every evening; and the scribe writes down the name of every guest, seals up the list, and locks the door. They come again in the morning and go over the list and the inmates; and a man goes with the travellers to the next hostelry and returns to the officer with proof that they have arrived.... The traveller can buy all he needs at these inns.”

Batûta visited the great port of Zaitun (Touen-chow), whence, among other manufactures, “clothes of gold and satyns riche of hewe”10 were shipped. Perhaps there was no port in the world with so big a trade as Zaitun. Batûta thought so: “The harbour is one of the greatest on the earth—I err—it is the greatest. There I have seen an hundred junks of the biggest size at one time, and more smaller ones than could be numbered.... Here, as in every Chinese city, every citizen has a garden and a field, and his house stands in the middle of the land he owns. For this reason, the cities of China are very much spread out.” At Zaitun, he had the good fortune to meet, in the Moslem quarter, the ambassador who had been sent to Delhi; and now great folk began to make his acquaintance. Among his visitors was “one of the merchants to whom I owed money when I ran into debt on my arrival in India, and who had shown more breeding than the rest of my creditors.” The Head Mandarin wrote to the Emperor to ask permission for the traveller to visit him at his capital; and, while awaiting a reply, allowed him to travel by water-way far inland from Canton, and provided him with an escort. At Canton, he found temple-hospitals for widows and orphans, the blind, crippled, and infirm.

He tells how the sailors stood up amidship to row, and the passengers sat fore and aft. He visited one of those wonderful saints who claimed incredible years.The holy man told him that he was one of the saints whom he had visited in India.This man had the reputation of being able to induce visions.Possibly he united the qualifications of skilled hypnotist and skilled liar.

When our traveller returned to Canton he received permission to visit the capital.He journeyed many days by land and along the Imperial Canal.He speaks rapturously of the fertility and charm of the country he passed through.Everywhere he was treated with the deepest respect.But there was a drawback: everywhere Paganism was flourishing.He met a fellow-believer, the brother of one of the seers of Egypt, a man greatly esteemed by the Chinese, and later on one particular prophesy was completely fulfilled, for he came across another brother, whom it was also foretold he should meet, on the borders of Sahara.

While attending the court of the viceroy at Hang-chow, he was eye-witness to a remarkable feat, of which he gives as circumstantial an account as one would expect to get from a man of the fourteenth century.“It was in the hot season, and we were in the courtyard outside the palace.A juggler, a slave of the Khân, came in, and the Emir commanded him to show some of his marvels.Thereupon the juggler took a wooden bowl with several holes made in it, and through these holes long thongs were passed.He laid hold of these thongs, and threw the bowl up into the air.It went so high that we could no longer see it.There was only a little of the end of the thong left in the juggler’s hand.He ordered one of his boy helpers to lay hold of it and mount.The boy climbed up the thong, and he also went out of sight.The juggler called him three times; but no reply came; so he seemed to get into a great rage, snatched up a knife, and laid hold of the thong; and he also was no longer to be seen.After a time, down came one of the boy’s hands, then a foot, than the other hand, then the other foot, then the trunk, and, lastly, the head. And now, down came the juggler, panting, and his clothes in a bloody state. He kissed the ground in front of the Emir and said something to him in Chinese. The Emir gave him some order, and he then took up the severed parts, laid them together properly, gave a kick, and behold! the boy got up and was before us again. I was so astounded that my heart beat violently, as it did when the Sultan of India had a similar trick done before me. A drug was given me, which set me right again. The Khazi Alfkaouddîn was next to me. ‘By Allah!’ said he, ‘as for me I believe there has been neither going up nor coming down, nor cutting to pieces, nor making the boy whole again. It is nothing but trickery.’ ”

We must not forget that Batûta was more than inclined to superstition, that he was very perturbed by what he saw, or thought he saw, that the “magician” had boys with him, who probably assisted in this trick, and that it is part of the conjurer’s art to divert the attention of spectators while in the actual performance of his feats.And the event was reduced to writing years after it was observed.Moreover, one of the earlier investigations of the Society for Psychical Research shewed that, on an occasion when a clever amateur conjurer, not known to be such, invited highly educated and observant witnesses to a supposed spiritualistic séance, and received their accounts of what they believed themselves to have seen, written independently of each other and immediately after the event, “not one of the detailed reports is accurate throughout, and scarcely one of them is accurate in even all the points of importance.”11 But we have it on the authority of the Professor of Chinese at Cambridge that P’u Sung-ling, the author of the Liao Chai, relates having seen the complete trick, as Batûta describes it, in the seventeenth century,12 except that, in this case, the boy came out of a box. These are, perhaps, the most remarkable of many similar mystifications, some of them related by quite respectable witnesses, from the 13th century down to our own time.13

He tells us of the excellent workmanship of Chinese artisans, and how they worked in chains for a period of ten years.At the end of that time, they were free to go about in China, but not to leave the frontiers.At 50, they became absolutely free men, and were maintained at the public cost, old age pensioners, in fact, in this early fourteenth century.And the pension was not merely given to these slave-workers, but to nearly all Chinese.

He admired the gay life on the canal, crowded with the boat-houses of the people—a teeming happy population, dressed in bright colours, and pelting one another in pure fun with oranges and lemons.Hang-chow had within its great encircling wall six towns, each guarded by walls.At Khaniku or Khanbalik (Pekin?)he was present at the obsequies of a great dignitary, whom he believed to be the Tartar Emperor; but that was not so, for the Emperor, who had ascended the throne 14 years before Batûta’s arrival, reigned 21 years after his departure.But he certainly was present at the funeral of some great Tartar; for his account of the interment of the Tartar dignitaries of China is confirmed by at least one other early traveller.He tells us of how the dead man’s concubines and horses were buried with him, alive, in the same grave.He relates, not very correctly, the ceremonies observed at the court of the Emperor.Apparently his recollection becomes confused with that of the court-usage at Delhi and Yemen.In any case, it is possible that he only had an interview with some viceroy, concerning whom he was misinformed or somehow mistook him for the supreme Khân.

A revolt against Tartar rule took place about this time, so Batûta thought it prudent to leave China. He embarked on a junk which belonged to the King of Sumatra, whom he had visited on his way out, and “whose servants are Mohammedans.” On the voyage the junk laboured through a terrific storm. The mirage of a big mountain was also seen. The sailors took this for the fabled roc, with which the Arabian Nights Entertainment made our Childhood acquainted.

He remained in Sumatra three months, the guest of the monarch who had before entertained him; and was fortunate in witnessing the nuptials of the heir-apparent.First came dancers and merry minstrelsy; then the bride, conducted from the apartments of the women by forty richly adorned ladies, who carried her train.For this high occasion, they had removed their veils.The bride went up on a platform; and the bridegroom rode up, in all the pride of armour, of a stately elephant, and of his own self-importance. One hundred youths of quality, beardless like himself, attended him on horseback. They were clad in white, their caps being a glitter of gold and jewels. Largess was scattered among the crowd. The prince now went up to his father, kissed his foot, and ascended the platform. Then the bride rose and kissed her groom’s hand; he sat beside her, and he and she put betel and fawfel into one another’s mouth. Then the covering of the platform was let down, and the whole structure, with bride and bridegroom on it, was carried into the palace. Finally, a feast was given to the crowd.

From Sumatra, Batûta voyaged in a junk to the Malabar coast of Southern India, and thence sailed to Arabian Zafar (A.D. 1347), both well-remembered places, coasted to Hormuz, wandered over the Two Iraks (Persia and Mesopotamia) once again; made across Asia Minor to Tadmor and as far north as Aleppo. At Damascus he got the first news of home he had received during his wanderings; his father had lain fourteen years in his quiet grave at Tangier. The Black Death was raging at Damascus. It slew twenty-four hundred of the inhabitants in a single day. So Batûta made his way to Egypt through Syria and Palestine, and went on to Mecca by way of the Red Sea and Jidda. This was the fourth of his pilgrimages. On his return to Cairo, he found the Black Death wasting the population. Mocking, lethal, invisible, this awful plague was rapidly sweeping westward and destroying whole families. Agnolo da Tura of Siena tells us that he had to bury five of his sons in the same grave with his own hands, and that his was no exceptional case. Batûta left Cairo for Jerusalem and returned from Palestine to Egypt by sea. He now felt a desire to see his native land again. He took ship to Sardinia, and, wishing to see the island, let the vessel he had voyaged in go to Tunis. He was lucky, for it was taken by Christians. He managed to reach Tunis in another ship, and got to Fez overland on Nov. 8th, 1349; having been on his travels nearly a quarter of a century. He presented himself before the Sultan, and was received as was befitting so pious a pilgrim and distinguished a traveller.

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CHAPTER IX

MOORS OF SPAIN AND NEGROES OF TIMBUKTU

But Batûta’s travels were by no means at an end. He made a filial visit to the place where earth that “makes all sweet” had closed on his father’s history. Once at Tangier, the temptation was strong to cross the Straits and visit the shrinking Moslem dominion in Spain. He landed where his compatriots had landed to conquer the Peninsula—at Gibraltar (Jabal Tarik, the Hill of Victory). He saw a cousin by his mother’s side, who had settled here; ran all over Moorish Andalusia, visiting renowned cities that still remained in Mohammedan hands; and came to lordly Grenada, where the Alhambra must have been nearing its completion. He returned to Fez by way of Ceuta.

His energy was unabated; his thirst for travel unquenched; he could not settle down.In February, 1352, he is off again; this time for Central Africa.At Tafilelt, on the borders of Sahara, he meets another brother of the Sheik at Alexandria; and so another prophecy is fulfilled.In mid-Sahara, he finds an oasis with a “village on it where there is nothing good.The mosque and the houses are built of blocks of salt and are covered with camel hide.There is no tree, for the soil is pure sand; but there are mines of salt.”He had dropped on those dwellings of rock-salt of which Herodotus wrote seventeen hundred years before him.But only the underlings of traders abode there; and dates and camel’s flesh were their fare.Here was the salt-supply for the wild tribes of Sahara.They cut the blocks of it into a certain shape and used this as money.The caravan with which Batûta travelled suffered severely here from the vileness of the water.

When Tashala was reached, the caravan rested three days to make ready for a vast and solitary tract of desert “where there is no water, nor is bird or tree to be seen, only sand and hills of sand, blown about by the wind in such wise that not the smallest vestige of a track remains. Wherefore, no one can travel without guides from among the traders; but of these there are many. The sunlight there is blinding.... Evil spirits have their will of that man who shall travel by himself. They enchant him, so that he wanders wide of his path, and there he comes to his end.”

A long journey across this great waste of sand brought the caravan to another oasis, where pits had been dug to fill with water, and where negroes took care of a store of goods out in the open.These negroes did not show the deep respect due to the superior white race; but Batûta had a fancy to learn all about them, so he stayed on, and put up with their want of manners for two whole months.Traces, at least, of polyandry were to be found here; for a sister’s son succeeded to property, and everybody took the name of a maternal uncle.The women were good looking, but, alas!they were far from shy; they did not even wear a veil, notwithstanding their accompanying the men to the mosque.Traders might take them for their wives; but must leave them behind on their departure.Our zealous Moslem, experienced in matrimony as he was and so excellent a judge of concubines—all of them sacred property and his very own—was greatly shocked at yet another instance of the freedom in manners of women and absence of jealousy in the husbands among certain Mohammedan peoples.A man might have a woman visit him, even with her husband there, and in the presence of his own wife; and a man might go home to find one of his male friends sitting alone with the wife of his bosom.But what would perturb an ordinary man causes no flutter in this degenerate breast.“He quietly takes a seat apart from them until the visitor goes away.”Batûta’s sense of delicacy was much offended when, calling on a former host of his, who was a judge moreover, he found that a handsome young woman had also made a call and was still there. He upbraided his friend roundly, and the only reply he got was that it was the custom of the country. This was too much: he broke with the judge.

A long, difficult, but quite safe journey brought him and three companions to Malli.Here he was seriously ill, and the sickness lasted many weeks; “but Allah brought me back to health.”A few white people dwelt at Malli, of whom the judge was his host.“‘Arise,’” said the judge to him one day when the Sultan had given a feast, “‘the Sultan hath sent thee a gift.’I fully looked for a rich dress, some horses and other valuable gifts; and lo!there were but three crusts of bread, a piece of dried fish, and a dish of sour milk.I smiled at people so simple and the value they gave to such rubbish.”Experience of spendthrift Oriental Courts and the lavish munificence of princes in other parts of the Mohammedan world had spoiled him for the simplicity of Central Africa.He often saw the Sultan after this incident; but sorely as his self-love was wounded by such a contrast to the honour always paid to him hitherto, he held himself in until his fury reached fever-heat and it became impossible to keep a bridle on his tongue any longer.Then he rose to his feet: “I have travelled the world over,” said he; “I have visited the rulers thereof; I have stayed four months in thy dominions; but no gift, no suitable food has come to me from thee.What shall I say about thee when men shall question me concerning thee?”A horse and good provisions, and a supply of gold now came from this “greedy and worthless man”; before whom the negroes presented themselves in the worst of their beggarly garments, probably as a sign of their humility; for they “crawled to his presence, beating the ground with their elbows and throwing dust on their heads.”However the “greedy and worthless” Sultan is allowed at least one small virtue: he kept the land in order; the traveller there had no fear of robbers, and if any one chanced to die, his property was handed over to his lawful successors. And the people had a great virtue also; they were constant in their attendance at the mosque; and if a son did not learn the whole of the Koran by heart, his father kept him shut up until he had done so. Yet, in spite of such praiseworthy piety, they let their little daughters and slaves whether male or female, go about quite naked. Batûta remarks that here cowries were used as coin. Travellers in the Niger District during the third decade of the last century found that many of the habits and customs described by Batûta still obtained there.

From Malli, our traveller journeyed on to the banks of the Niger, and saw, with surprise, its great herds of hippopotami.He visited Timbuktu, and believed he was journeying along the banks of the Nile; a pardonable mistake; for the Niger takes a general direction towards the North-East in this part of its course.He now returned to Fez by a different and more easterly route (A.D. 1355).

He had traversed the entire Mohammedan world, and beyond it to wherever a Mohammedan was to be found.He had visited several far-separated places several times, and had obeyed the obligation to visit Mecca oftener than the most zealous Moslem was wont to do.The Sultan commanded that an account of his travels should be recorded.The Sultan’s Secretary edited the work, and thought to embellish a plain tale by overloading it with literary pinchbeck and by dragging in irrevelant quotations from the poets.The last words of the work are: “Here ends what I have put into form of the words of Sheik Ibn Abdulla Mohammed, whom may Allah honour!There is no reader of intelligence but must grant that this Sheik is the greatest traveller of our days; and should any one dub him the greatest traveller of all Islam, it were no lie.”14

Ibn Batûta was 51 at the end of his recorded journeyings.In spite of the racket of thirty years, spent in unceasing travel, of shipwreck and battle, of privation and fevers and much suffering of many kinds, all of which he brushes lightly aside as matter of small moment, his natural vigour remained such that he lived three years beyond the allotted span.The “fitful fever” of his life ceased in the year 1377.

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IV.—LUDOVICO VARTHEMA OF BOLOGNA,

RENEGADE PILGRIM TO MECCA.FOREMOST OF ITALIAN TRAVELLERS.

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CHAPTER I.THE GREAT AGE OF THE RENAISSANCE AND OF DISCOVERY.

By the close of the Fifteenth Century, the relative stability of society and of its convictions during the Middle Ages was undone. The Italian, at least, had cast off the restraints of that rigid and traditional world, and was in reaction against it. For, social bonds were loosened, and the corporate life of guild and city was in decay. With the revival of letters, society became imbued once again with the Greek and Roman conception of man as a progressive creature, and was awakened to the richness of thought and feeling to be enjoyed in vigorous passionate life. Self-sufficiency, self-assertion, and force of will were admired above all other qualities, and it was the ambition of most men to achieve them. Each man strove to fulfil his own nature in his own way. Religion rapidly degenerated into an indispensable observance of formalities, a traditional habit, a customary cloak. The rigorous men of the Renaissance sought to live fully, freely, and with diversity; they thirsted for new and refreshing springs; they quaffed delightful and refreshing draughts; they boldly winged their way to unfamiliar spheres, or gratified sense and passion to the full. The age was aglow with all manner of ideality. On the whole its passions were unrestrained, save by prudence; unchecked by any moral curb, which it had counted foolishness. The religious rapture of Savonarola was an ephemeral phenomenon, and almost unique. Even in the gentle grace of Perugino’s Madonnas and the sweet innocence with which he invests the Child, we may mark the substitution of religious affectation for religious sincerity. The age loved pomp and magnificence; and these appear in the frescoes of Pinturicchio. It was a field for the development of a deep-seated, incalculable, yet persuasive force of Will: the spirit is portrayed in the subtle eye and inscrutable smile of Monna Lisa.

It was when the Renaissance was in full flood, but before Ariosto, “with his tongue in his cheek,” had achieved his cantoes of romantic chivalry; before Raphael plied his brush with too perfect and serene a finish; before Michael Angelo cast aside charm and beauty for the expression of strength and power, that the energy of the age found a new field for activity.The Turk swept the Ægean Sea and ruled the Western Roman Empire.But the great drama of History unfolds tragic irony surpassing the invention of poets.When the vast spaces of the great Church of Justinian rang with the shout of the victors, the knell of Moslem predominance sounded unheard.The Turk had captured the gateways of the East only to force the European, in adventures beyond the seas, to the domination of the world.Pioneers set out from Portugal and Spain, and tried to cut out the Moslem middleman; they steered to find a sea-way to the fabulous wealth of India.They coasted along amazing lands, peopled by strange races, and entered novel and unsuspected seas.Columbus found a new world beyond “wandering fields of barren foam”; Vasco di Gama was forcing his way round Africa.Many a narrow, ancient illusion was dispelled; and the minds of men were excited to a rapture of expectation.The hearts of pious Portuguese and Spaniards beat high at the hope of combining the salvation of heathen souls with the profitable enslavement of heathen bodies.All men were allured by the prospect of acquiring new markets, priceless gems, and the gold dust of El Dorado.The modern world of aggressive commerce was engendered in the very bosom of the High Renaissance.

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CHAPTER II.—FROM VENICE TO DAMASCUS.

No commercial arithmetic called a certain Ludovico di Varthema to adventure. Like Dante’s Ulysses, “nothing could quench his inward burning to have full witness of the world.” “Ungifted,” so he tells us, “with that far-casting wit for which the earth in not enough, and which ranges through the loftiest regions of the firmament with careful watch and survey; but possessed of slender parts merely,” he fixed his mind on beholding with his own eyes some unknown part of the world and on marking “where places are, what is curious in their peoples, their different animals, and what fruit-bearing and scented trees grow there ... keeping before me that the thing which a single eye-witness may set forth shall outweigh what ten may declare on hearsay.” It is as if a cavalier of Boiardo or Ariosto had forsaken fairy land and sought novel adventure in the kingdom of knowledge. Varthema set out to see and know; and, although obviously a man of no great fortune, he would seem to have neglected remarkable opportunities of trading and growing rich.

That he was a Bolognese, we learn from the title-page of his volume—the ItinerarioAs a citizen of Bologna, the Pope was his overlord; and we find him calling himself, by a pardonable license, a Roman.Whether eager curiosity was the only motive which impelled him to travel, we know not.He lets drop in the middle of his volume that he left a wife and children at home.Marriage in Italy was a matter of family arrangement, with a view to the increase of family wealth and power; and children could readily be left under the care of kinsmen.“The Italians make little difference between children and nephews or near kinsfolk,” wrote Bacon, “but, so they be of the lump, they care not, though they pass not through their own body.” And the family council has parental force in Italy, even to-day. The unsettled condition of every Italian State in the days of that “Most holy Lord the Pope Alexander Borgia,” his crafty, treacherous son, and hardly less crafty and treacherous native statesmen and foreign invaders, often made swift change of residence highly desirable. Of that affectation of the men of the Renaissance—excessive and trumpeted desire of fame, which was a mere imitation of the classics,—there is not a trace in Varthema: he cared as little for bubbles as for baubles. Whatever other motives may have incited him, lust of travel was his predominant passion. What his occupation had been is unknown. On an occasion when it was helpful to him to pose as a physician he did so; and his close observation of the structure and habits of animals and the qualities of plants, suggests the kind of educative discipline which a physician would receive. But since he confesses to having ordered a cold astringent preparation when a warm laxative was required, his knowledge of physic was limited or readily forgotten. Again, since, on one occasion, he takes military service as a Mameluke; professes himself, on another occasion, to be an adept in the manufacture of mortars; and we find him fighting with the intrepidity and skill of a proved warrior against Arabs in India, he may very well have been a soldier before setting out on his travels. In that age of confusion, when the successes of the French in Lombardy broke the balance of power among the Italian States, there was ample opportunity of martial employment. There is not a trace of the accomplished haunter of courts, no love of literature or of art apparent in the ItinerarioVarthema’s birth, upbringing, and “the fate of his bones” are secrets which lie securely hidden in the ruins of time.But his narrative endures—an imperishable monument.It reveals him as a true man of his period.His skill in dissembling, and his insensitiveness at the call of expediency to any obligation of truth or gratitude, contrast with his scrupulous pursuit of truth for its own sake and the accuracy of his observation. His record of travel is one which displays the coolness of his courage no less than its intrepid dash; it reveals a man constant of purpose, and endowed with ingenuity, resourcefulness, self-restraint, prudence, sagacity, and a sense of humour. Here indeed is a rare man!

In the year 1502 there was peace in the Levant.Lucrative trade between Venice and Egypt went on, unmolested by Turkish fleets.At the close of that year, Varthema took sail for Alexandria; the wind was favourable, and he reached the great port on one of the early days of 1503.Alexandria was the chief mart for the interchange of the wares of East and West, and therefore well known to Europeans; “Wherefore,” says Varthema, “yearning after new things as a thirsty man doth for fresh water, I entered the Nile and arrived at Cairo.”“Babylon,” as Europeans called Cairo, was reputed to be one of the most marvellous of cities; but our traveller was disappointed to find it far smaller than he had thought.He declines to discuss the government established there, or the arrogance of its Mameluke rulers; “for my fellow-countrymen well wot of such matters.”Close upon two centuries had passed since a Circassian slave clothed the Imam with a royal robe, usurped his mundane powers, reduced him to a nonentity, founded a dynasty, and ruled by military force from the Taurus and Euphrates to the Nile.This dynasty delegated authority to Emirs and Sheiks.It ruled by means of a soldiery, like itself, of slave origin, cruel, insolent and unbending.Children of Christian descent, brought mainly from the region which lies to the south of Caucasus, were instructed in the faith of the Moslem and trained to physical endurance, boldness, skill in warfare, and contempt of all men save their masters and themselves.These Mamelukes, as they were called, received liberal payment; they were allowed to keep a harem and to rear a family. The land lay crushed and impotent beneath this military caste. Military slaves, they exhibited the vices of slaves in office. As in the time of Ibn Batûta, the Sultan of Cairo ruled; but now ruled over delegates who were frequently rebellious to his authority; yet he and they and all, even to the terrible ottoman Turk at Constantinople, who now held Eastern Europe in bondage from the Danube to Cape Matapan, acknowledged the headship of the Imam at Cairo as legitimate Caliph of the great Abbaside line.

Leaving Cairo, Varthema took ship for Beyrout. Here, he saw nothing noteworthy, save the ruins of an ancient palace, “which, so they say,” was once the residence of the princess whom St. George rescued from the dragon. We find a novel scepticism in this man of the new age. “So they say,” is a phrase of frequent recurrence in the ItinerarioThe sceptic’s ears are as open as his brain is active; he repeats all the information given to him, however extravagant and however healthy his doubt; but he is careful to let the reader know that it is mere hearsay; he gives a hint of his own disbelief, and leaves the matter open to sane judgment: the piping times of a merchant in marvels have passed away.When Varthema has his own ends to serve, we shall find him telling a lie with as little scruple as any diplomatist of his generation; but he records faithfully and exactly what he went out to see and the incidents which befell him.We have the testimony of the precise Burton that “all things well considered, Ludovico15 Bartema, for correctness of observation and readiness of wit, stands in the foremost rank of oriental travellers”; and that great authority writes thus although he only quotes from Richard Eden’s imperfect and interpolated translation of a Latin deformation of the Itinerario; and probably knew of no other copy.

Occasionally Varthema falls into a not uncommon blunder: he exaggerates numbers; but he is always hard-headed, incredulous of tradition, and not at all given to romancing.

A short voyage of two days brought our Italian from Beyrout to Tripoli, whence he took the caravan-route to Hamath, a large city on the Orontes, once an outpost of Judah, retaken by Israel in the wars between the two kingdoms. At Menin, a land of luscious fruits and the serviceable cotton-plant, he found a population of Christian-subjects of the Emir of Damascus and two beautiful churches, “said to have been built by Helena, mother of Constantine.”He went on to Aleppo, and thence eight days of easy travel brought him to a city so ancient that its foundation is lost in unfathomed time.He writes of Damascus that “to set it forth is beyond my power.”Here he remained some months, in order to learn Arabic—a task quite indispensable for farther travel in Mohammedan lands.He tells us of the fortress, built by a Florentine renegade, a man skilled in physic, who cured a Sultan suffering from the effects of poison, and is venerated as a holy man.This transformation of the physician into the saint may have suggested some serviceable play-acting in India, of which we shall become spectators later on.

The military Empire of Cairo was in decay, and had become very corrupt.A vivid picture is set before us of delegated despotism and its concomitants; greed, graft, outrage and squeeze.Whenever a new Sultan succeeded to power, very large sums would be offered him for the rule of such a wealthy city as Damascus.Of course the gold would have to be wrung out of the resident merchants.If a good instalment of the promised “present” were not speedily forthcoming, the Sultan would find means to remove the dilatory Emir at the sword’s point, “or in some other way; but, let him make the present aforesaid, and he shall retain his rule.”“The traders of the city are not dealt with justly.The rulers vie with each other in oppressing them, by robbery or by dealing death.... The Moors are subject to the Mamelukes after the fashion of the lamb to the wolf.... The Sultan will send two missives to the governor of the citadel, one of which will command him to call together there such lords or traders as he may choose. And when they are gathered together in the citadel, the second letter is read to them, whereof that which is its purpose, is gotten without delay. Thus doth the lord aforesaid set about getting money.” We are told of the curious way in which strict guard is enforced at the citadel: throughout the night at intervals each sentinel signals to his next neighbour by beating a drum; he who fails to pass on a responsive rat-tat has to spend a twelvemonth in prison.

Varthema found the houses dirty outside—(they are still built of a sort of cob), but the interiors splendid, with fountains and mosaics and carvings and columns of marble and porphyry.He visited the Great Mosque “where, so it is said,” the head of St.Zechariah is kept; and was shown the exact spot where, “so it is given out,” Saul, breathing out threatenings and slaughter, saw a great light and heard the voice of Jesus; also the house “where (so they say) Cain slew Abel, his brother.”

“But let us now return to the liberty which the Mamelukes aforesaid enjoy in Damascus....They go about in twos and threes, since it is counted for dishonour to go alone.And, should they chance to meet two or three ladies, license is granted to them, or they take it.They lie in wait for these ladies in certain great hostelries, which are called Khans; and, as ladies pass by the doorway each Mameluke will lay hold of the hand of one of them, draw her inside, and abuse her.The lady resists having her face seen; for women go about with face covered in such wise that while they know us, we do not know who they are....And sometimes it chances that the Mamelukes, thinking to take some lord’s daughter, take their own wives; a thing which happened whilst I was there.... When Moor meeteth Mameluke, he must make obeisance and give place, or he is bastinadoed, even should he be the chief merchant of the city.”

We are told that rich Christian traders in every kind of merchandise dwelt in Damascus, but were “ill-treated.”Long-eared goats were brought up three flights of stairs to be milked for your meal.A detailed description is given of the productions of the city and the dress and customs of its people.

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CHAPTER III

OVER THE DESERT TO MECCA

Now, the yearly caravan from Damascus to the Holy Cities of Arabia was in preparation—a journey which the pious Moslem makes by rail to-day.For, as has been truly remarked, “the unchanging East” is a venerable catchword: the Orient moves on, but slowly.No “unbelieving dog” might plant his foot on Arabian soil; no European Christian had ever seen its sacred fanes.Here was a golden opportunity for one “longing for novelty.”Varthema had learned to speak Arabic.That insinuating smile, persuasive accent, and ingratiating address, so characteristically Italian, were surely his, for we find that he never fails to secure the firm friendship of utter strangers whenever he may require it—nay, he exerts some exceptional fascination on all men, some dæmonic force, as Goethe calls it.He says: “I formed a great friendship with the Captain of the Mamelukes” who were to accompany and protect the caravan.Doubtless, Varthema’s look and bearing were martial; and, as has been said, he may have acquired experience in the Italian wars.To his credentials he added the persuasive argument of a bribe.His new friend accepted him as one of the escort.True, he must profess conversion to the Mohammedan Faith.This was no great strain on the conscience in days when Borgia and Julius della Rovere and the Medici sat in the chair of St.Peter, and when most Christians contented themselves with a half-sceptical observance of habitual forms. Like Henry of Navarre, Varthema thought an apple off another tree than his own a matter of small moment in the fulfilment of his purpose.He repeated the necessary formula and became a Moslem.He had to take a new name.Might it be because he was committed to an unparalleled adventure that he took the name of the son of Amittei?He called himself Jonah.

This bold step was worthy of the Italian Renaissance, when a man had thought it shame not to fashion his own life to his own ends; when he might brush weak scruples aside, and overcome obstacles as the oar turns the wave, converting hindrance into help.Behold our unflinching traveller mounted on a spirited steed, armed to the teeth; ready to encounter all chances of battle, desert-thirst, and unknown peril—one fulfilling old Malory’s test: “he that is gentle will draw him unto gentle tatches.”

The caravan, of pilgrims and merchants, women, children and slaves (about 40,000 souls) and 30,000 camels, was guarded by only 60 Mamelukes, 20 being in the van, 20 midmost, and 20 bringing up the rear.Damascus was left on April 8th 1503, and on the third day El Mezarib was reached, a place on the high land east of the Jordan and about 30 or 40 miles from it.Here the caravan rested 3 days to give the merchants time to buy Arabian steeds.Doughty, that intrepid English traveller and writer of unique English, tells us that, not many years ago, El Mezarib remained the appointed place for gathering up the pilgrim multitude.In Varthema’s time the sheik of the district was both powerful and predatory.He is said to have owned 300,000 camels (50 times the number accorded to Job in the day of recompense), 40,000 horses and 10,000 mares.The number may be exaggerated; but the sheik was able to pounce down on the granaries of Egypt, Syria or Palestine when he was least expected—even believed to be a hundred miles away.“Truly, these folk do not run, but fly, swift as falcons; and they keep close together like a flock of starlings,” Varthema tells us.Their fleet spirited Arabian mares would run a whole day and night without stopping, and be fresh again after a draught of camels’ milk.He describes the marauding Arab very correctly as of dark complexion, small make, effeminate voice, and with long, stiff, black hair.

From El Mezarib, the caravan pursued its ancient course through Syrian and Arabian deserts; but more to the east than in later days.The scheme of travel was to march for about 20 hours; then to halt at a given signal and unload the camels; after resting for a day and night, a signal was again given, and, in a trice all was made ready, and cavalcade and “ships of the desert” were off again over rocky wastes and pathless seas of sand.Then as now, camels were fed on balls of barley-meal and watered every three days.Every eighth day, if no well was found, the ground was dug deeply for water, and the caravan halted a day or two.But it was invariably attacked by Bedouins when this happened.It was their amiable custom to lie in wait for the caravan and carry off women, children or any other unconsidered trifle which might fall within their grasp.Unhappy Joseph Pitts of Exeter (who was captured by Algerine pirates, professed Mohammedanism to escape cruelty, and accompanied his third master on a pilgrimage to Mecca in 1680) describes how, between Mecca and Medina, “the skulking thievish Arabs do much mischief to some of the Hagges (pilgrims to Meccah).For in the night-time they steal upon them ...loose a camel before and behind, and one of the thieves leads away the camel with the Hagge upon his back asleep.”And, thirty years ago, Charles Montagu Doughty told us how the Bedouin youth would emulate Spartan boyhood and strain every power to rob a Hadji, for the glory of the feat.

There are many ruins to be found in Edom and Arabia Petrea.Like most men of sceptical turn, Varthema tempered a spirit of free enquiry with a little credulity.He saw distant rocks of red sandstone, fantastically shaped; they were “like blood on red wax mingled with soil.”He was told that these were the ruins of the cities of the plain, and writes, probably from conviction, certainly with commendable prudence, seeing that he had posed as an apostate: “Verily, Holy Writ doth not lie, for one beholds how the cities perished by miracle of God. Of a truth, I believe from the witness of my own eyes that these men were evil; for all around the land is wholly dry and barren. The earth may bear no single thing, and of water there is none ... and, by a miracle the whole ruin is there to be seen even yet. That valley was full twenty miles long; and thirty-three of our company died there from thirst, and divers others, not being quite dead, were buried in the sand, their faces being left uncovered.”

One day, when traversing what the Bible calls “the wilderness of Edom,” “we came to a little mountain, and near to it was a cistern; whereat we were well pleased and encamped on the said hill.The next day, early in the morning, 24,000 Arabs rode up to us and demanded payment for their water”—a time-honoured exaction of the Bedouin Arab, which in our own days is said to have supported one third of Arabia.—“We refused, saying that the water was the gift of God.Thereupon they opened battle with us, saying that we had robbed them of their water.We set the camels as a protecting rampart all round us and put the merchants in the midst thereof and we stood siege during two nights and two days; and a constant skirmish went on.By that time both we and our foes had come to an end of our water.The mountain was wholly encompassed by Arabs, and they averred that they would break through our defence.Our leader, finding himself unable to hold on, took counsel with the Moslem traders; and we gave the Arabs 1,200 ducats of gold.But, when they had gotten the money, they said that not even 10,000 ducats of gold should be satisfaction for their water; whereby we perceived what they sought more than money.So our sagacious leader agreed with the caravan that all men capable of battle should not mount on their camels, but look to their arms. In the morning we put the whole caravan forward, and we Mamelukes stayed behind.We made a strength of 300 fighting men; and we had not to wait long for the fray. We lost but one man and one woman, and we killed 600 of them.”

This statement evokes from a French author the ironic wit of his race: he thinks that the two who were slain may be pitied for their remarkably bad luck.Burton, who more than once accuses Varthema of exaggerating numbers, thinks that his statement here may confirm Strabo’s account of Ælius Gallus having lost two soldiers only in a battle with 10,000 Arabs.We must not forget that the Arab’s body was bare and wholly unprotected; he rode his steed bare-back, carried no fire-arms, and his only weapons were lance and bow.He attacked in dense formation.No wonder therefore that Arabs fell in masses as they came on, and that the carnage was still more terrible when they fled, helter-skelter “Come le rane innanzi alla nimica Biscia” as “frogs before their enemy the snake.”16 And the Mamelukes, few as they were, rode saddled steeds, were disciplined, protected by armour, possessed of fire-arms, and almost unerring of aim. Once Varthema saw one of the Mamelukes perform a feat which recalls the legend of William Tell: At a second attempt, he shot off from the bow a pomegranate poised on the head of a slave at a distance of about twelve or fifteen paces. And they were as expert horsemen as the Arabs. A Mameluke removed his saddle, put it on his head and replaced it while at full gallop.

Thirty days were spent in absolute desert, and the caravan was always attacked when it encamped by a water supply; but the only loss which the foe caused during about six weeks of journeying was in the big battle in which the man and woman were killed.A little later on and up to our own time, the water-cisterns were defended by fortifications.Leaving arid and rocky hills,

“Through these,” says Varthema, “we travelled five days and five nights.Now you should understand all about it.It is a great level stretch of white sand, fine as flour, and if by mischance the wind blow from the south, all may be reckoned as dead; even with the wind in our favour we could not see each other ten paces off.Wherefore there are wooden boxes set on the camels, and in these the travellers sleep and eat.The guides go on in front with compasses, even as if they were at sea.Many died here from thirst; and very many, having dug for water and found it, drank it until they burst; and here are mummies made.”

It is interesting to know that, up to 1908, when the railway for the conveyance of pilgrims from Damascus to Mecca was completed, those of the richer sort still used the wooden protection which our author describes.Possibly the mummies of which he speaks were merely corpses dried in the sun; but the preservation of the dead body by embalming was a very ancient practice in these parts.Doughty found no actual mummies in the Nabatean temples; but he collected and brought back, from the funeral chambers at El Khreby, resinous matters of the same character as those found in Egyptian sarcophagi.Presently, Varthema shall see powders for the mummification of the dead sold outside the Mosque at Mecca.Dried human flesh was an important part of the stock in trade of an Arabian physician whom Burton came across.But faith in the efficacy of pulverised mummy has been by no means confined to Arabia.In the Seventeenth Century, Sir Thomas Browne, tells us in his “Urn Burial” that: “Mummy is become merchandise, Miriam cures wounds and Pharaoh is sold for Balsams”; and even within the last few years Harry de Wint found the repulsive drug on sale as a cure for cancer at Serajevo in Bosnia.

It so happened that the usual discomposing sounds, made by the movements of unstable sand-hills, broke the silence of the desert just where the Prophet had once stopped to pray. The superstitious Moslems must have been wholly dismayed and demoralized, for even the iron nerve of Varthema was strained; he tells us that he “passed on with great danger, and never thought to escape.” At last, a thorn bush or two broke the monotony of this “sea of sand,” and the travellers knew that Medina was now only three days off. Even more pleasing than the sight of vegetation to those pilgrims, who had “seen neither beast, bird, reptile, no, nor insect, for fifteen days,” was the pair of turtledoves that lodged in the branches of the thorn bush. And, most delightful of all was the well of water which gave being to this miniature oasis. The water-skins were refilled; and, so copious was the supply that sixteen thousand camels were re-laden with the precious burden. Hard by, on a mountain, dwelt a curious colony, who depended on the well for their water. Varthema could see them in the far distance, “leaping about the rocks like wild goats.” And one does not wonder at their excitement; for the cistern would not fill up again until the rains should come. Varthema learned that these people were Jews, who burned with hatred of all Mohammedans, probably not without very just cause. “If they catch a Moor, they flay him alive.” They had the shrill voice of a woman, were swarthy, and went about naked. Probably their “nakedness” really amounted to their wearing a simple loose robe or a loin-cloth only. That they lived on goats’ flesh is not remarkable; for it is the staple food of the Bedouin Arab. Probably they were of small stature; but Varthema dwarfs then into comicality: he gives them but five or six spans of height. But he only saw them from afar. That they were Jews is no fable. In spite of the general expulsion of Jews from Arabia with the first successes of Islam, the existence of a remnant of the Chosen People in this district has been well authenticated by Arabian writers; they were to be found there nearly three centuries after Varthema saw them, and towards the close of the past century Doughty heard tradition of them. By some accident Varthema, or more likely, his printer, places them between Medina and Mecca; but he came across them before he reached Medina. It is hard to account for their presence in this isolated and desolate district; and many are the explanations which have been offered, and varied are the legends which have grown up. Badger thought “that their immigration occurred after the devastation of Judea by the armies of Nebuchadnezzar, and that the colony was enlarged by successive bands of refugees down to the destruction of Jerusalem by Titus and the persecutions to which they were subjected under the Emperor Hadrian.” Here is one of the many problems of History which are “beyond conjecture and hopeful expectation.”

Two days after this event, the pilgrims came up to another cistern of water; they were now only four miles from Medina.Everyone thoroughly cleansed himself thereat from all the grime and sweat of the hot, dusty desert, and put on fresh linen, in order that he might present himself purified before the sepulchre of the Prophet on the morrow.All around, the land “lay barren and under the curse of God”; but, two stones’ cast from the city there was a grove of date-trees and a refreshing conduit.

Our traveller found Medina to be but a poor place of about 300 hearths.Food was brought thither from Arabia Felix, Cairo and Ethiopia; first, to a port on the Red Sea, and thence overland by caravan—a journey which occupied four days.He found the inhabitants “scum”; a character which all travellers of all ages agree in giving them, and which they shared with the people of Rome and of all places whither pilgrims and the folk of many nations were wont to congregate.The Sunnites and Shiites there, the two great sects which divide the Moslem world “kill each other like beasts anent their heresies.”And Varthema, the pretended proselyte, suddenly remembers that he is writing for a Christian world, and is careful to assure it of his own conviction that “these (beliefs) are false—all of them.”

“One wished to see everything,” he says, so the pilgrims passed three days at Medina, “Some guide took each pilgrim by the hand and led him to the place where Mohammed was buried.”Varthema gives a description of the Mosque, than which, says Burton, nothing could be more correct.“It is surmounted,” writes the English traveller, “by a large gilt crescent, springing from a series of globes.The glowing imagination of the Moslems crown this gem of the building with a pillar of heavenly light, which directs, from three days’ distance, the pilgrim’s steps towards El Medinah.”Varthema avers that the marvellous light had a real matter of fact basis, being due to a cunning deception.Whether due to trickery, or to the suggestive efficacy of faith and expectant attention, the miracle once had a rival in the more ancient supernatural outburst, every Eastertide, of the holy fire at the altar of the Holy Sepulchre in Jerusalem.Neither Varthema nor his friend the Captain of the Mamelukes was a man easy to dupe, or given to the conjuring up of visions.“At the third hour of the night,” we read, “ten or twelve greybeards came to our camp, which was pitched two stones’ throw from the gate, crying, some here, some there, ‘There is no God but God!Mohammed is the Prophet of God!O Prophet!Do obeisance to God!Do obeisance to the Prophet!We implore forgiveness of sin.’Our captain and we ran out at this clamour; for we thought the Arabs were on us to rob the caravan.We demanded why they were crying out; for they made the same sort of din which may be heard among us Christians when a saint works a miracle.”(Varthema cannot conceal his sceptical temper!)“These elders answered: ‘Do ye not see the splendour coming forth from the tomb of the Prophet?’Our Captain replied that, for his part, he could see nothing, and asked us if anyone had seen anything; but we all said, ‘No.’ Then one of the old men demanded: ‘Are you slaves?’ Which is to say, Mamelukes. Our Captain replied, ‘Yes, we are slaves.’ To which the old man responded: ‘O, sirs, it is not given to you to see these heavenly things; for you are not yet well grounded in the faith.’ ” Now, in the morning of the same day, the Captain had offered the Sherîf of the Mosque 3,000 ducats to see the body of the Prophet, telling him that he had neither father nor mother, brothers nor sisters, wife nor children, and had come thither to save his soul. Whereupon the Sherîf had fallen into a rage and demanded how he dared desire to behold him for whom God made the heavens and the earth. Since the body was entombed within closed-up, solid walls, such an audacious request marks the sceptical irreverence and haughty insolence of the Mameluke, even before one of the most sacred temples of Islam. The Mamaluke had declared himself ready to pluck out his own unholy eyes for love of the Prophet, if only he might see his body first. The Sherîf, probably in order to silence him, then said that Mohammed had been translated to Heaven by angels. So now, the Captain shouted contemptuously to the reverend greybeard who had told him that it was denied him to see the vision by reason of imperfect faith: ‘You fool! Shall I give thee three thousand ducats? By God, I will not. You dog, son a dog!’ .... The Captain thought that enough; and said so; and, turning round to his comrades, exclaimed: ‘See where I wanted to throw away 3,000 seraphim!’ And he mulcted the Mosque by forbidding any of his men to visit it again.

Varthema dispels the popular belief that Mohammed’s coffin was suspended in mid-air by the attraction of a magnet.“I tell you truth when I affirm that there is no coffin of iron or steel, or any loadstone, or any loadstone mountain within four miles.”

The journey from Medina to Mecca was at this particular time beset with more than usual difficulty and peril. The Hejaz was nominally a vassaldom of Cairo; really, it was under the almost absolute rule of its own despot; and we learn from Arabian Chroniclers that the despotism was being fought for by rival brethren. Indeed, throughout Eastern lands, war between sons for succession to the throne rendered vacant by the death of a father was the rule. And, in the long run, this bloody business usually ended in the success of the most capable competitor; so that, however horrible, it did not work out badly; for what can be more fatal to a weak, subservient people than an incompetent ruler? “There was a very great war,” says Varthema, “one brother being against another; four brethren contended for the lordship of Mecca; so that we travelled for the space of ten days; and twice on our way we fought with 50,000 Arabs.” Probably Varthema habitually over-estimated numbers; but there is no doubt that he had cause for alarm before he reached the second of the two sacred goals.

Our traveller descended one of the two passes cut through the hills which girdle and defend Mecca, and found himself in a “very famous, fair and well-peopled” city.The caravan from Cairo had arrived eight days before.Joseph Pitts, the Exeter sailor, also tells us how the “caravans do even jump all into Mecca together.”“Verily,” says Varthema, “never did I see such a multitude gathered together in one place as during the twenty days I stayed thereat.”He writes us at some length, though not so minutely or correctly as Burckhardt, of the great house of Allah and of the Ka’abah within it—a building which conserves the form of the old heathen temple and which was a place of pilgrimage for ages before Mohammed; but this he did not know.He speaks of the sacred pigeons of the precincts; of the seven circuits made by the pilgrims; of the sacred well Zemzem, in whose brackish waters the Moslem cleanse themselves both spiritually and physically; for did not Hagar quench the dying Ishmael’s thirst therewith? of the sacrifice of sheep, and how the flesh was cooked over a fire made of camels’ dung; of elaborate rituals; of the gift of what was superfluous in the feast to the many famished poor among the pilgrims; of the ascent to Arafat, where Gabriel taught Adam to erect an altar; and of that strange, ancient relic of heathen times, the casting of stones at the devil. But he says not one word of the “Black Stone” of the Ka’abah, once the fetish of ancient Arabian worship, and kissed to-day by the Hadji (pilgrim). We learn that Mecca, like Medina, was fed from Arabia Felix and Africa. It was a mart as well as a place of pilgrimage.

Now for a marvel.In an enclosure of the Mosque were two unicorns!They were presents from an Ethiopian monarch to the Sultan of Mecca as the finest thing that could be found in the world ...the richest treasure ever sent.“Now, I will tell you of their make,” writes our author; “the elder is shaped like a colt of 30 months, and he has a horn on his forehead of about 3 arm lengths.The other is like a colt of one year, and his horn is the length of 3 hands.The colour is dark bay; the head like a hart’s, but no long neck; a thin short mane hangs over one side; the legs are slender and lean, like a goat’s; the foot, a little cloven, long, and much like a goat’s, with some hair at the back of the legs.Truly, this monster must be a very fierce and rare animal.”

Whatever our interpretation, this is no “traveller’s tale” of Varthema’s making.His painstaking veracity, except in the “practical politics” of life, has been confirmed a hundred times over.Later on in his book, we come across a description of the structure and habits of the elephant which is a triumph of sharp prose-vision and detailed matter of fact.One cannot doubt that he saw a beast at Mecca which resembled, not remotely, the Unicorn supporter of our Royal Coat of Arms. It is remarkable that Pliny describes a similar animal, and that Ctesias, Aristotle and Strabo speak of the Unicorn.The name occurs nine times in the Bible; but it is commonly supposed to refer to the Rhinoceros. Varthema’s strange beast was a very different animal, apparently resembling the horse-like creature with a solitary central horn which Niebuhr found repeatedly sculptured on the ruins of Persepolis. Similar beasts have been reported from Abyssinia and Cape Colony; and at one time the unicorn was believed in India to inhabit that refuge of the rare, inaccessible Thibet. Yet a generation that is still with us regarded the gorillas and pygmy men of Hanno as Carthaginian fables, until Du Chaillu brought back carcasses of the one and Stanley gave authentic word of the other. But scientists leave us no hope that some happy traveller shall come across a unicorn dead or alive. For the stumpy protuberance of the rhinoceros is an epidermal tissue, and the true bony horns of the deer tribe are developments which grow from, or correspond to, two frontal bones; and it would be impossible for a bony outgrowth to proceed from the mesian line. Varthema’s statement must be deemed by all who know anything of comparative anatomy to be incorrect. The great Owen thought that one of the two horns of the animal must have been broken off or remained undeveloped. Mr. Dollman, of South Kensington Museum, whose opinion the author sought through the kind agency of Mr. S. le Marchant Moore, thinks the creature was an onyx, with one of its horns suppressed and both gentlemen suggest “that Varthema saw the creature in profile, and having ascertained as well as he could under the circumstances, the existence of one horn, did not trouble himself much further about it: possibly the horn might have become more or less incurved.” We must leave the question there, until someone shall give us ocular evidence that Varthema made not the slightest blunder: truly his “horn shall be exalted!”

Varthema had now been signally successful in gratifying the passion to penetrate unknown and mysterious regions which Spanish and Portuguese discovery had aroused in him. So far as is known, he was the first European Christian to reach the holy cities of Arabia; and since his day no traveller ventured on the long and perilous route which he took. At least six Europeans managed to visit Mecca in the last century; but they all took the short route from the Red Sea.

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CHAPTER IV.

THE ESCAPE FROM THE CARAVAN

And now, in the spirit of Alexander sighing for new worlds to conquer, he looked forward with dismay to the return-journey of the caravan. A perilous surprise awaited him which, with wonted adroitness, he turned to his purpose. “Having charge from my Captain to buy certain things, a Moor looked me in the face, knew me and asked me ‘Where are you from?’ I answered: ‘I am a Moslem.’ His reply was: ‘You lie.’ ‘By the head of the Prophet,’ I said, ‘I am a Moslem’; whereto he answered: ‘Come to my house’; and I followed him thither. Then he spake to me in Italian, telling me whence I had come that he knew me to be no Moslem; and that he had been in Genoa and Venice; whereof he gave me proof. When I understood this, I told him that I was a Roman, and had become a Mameluke at Cairo (!) Whereat he rejoiced greatly, and treated me with much honour.” Varthema now began to ask questions of his host; craftily affecting ignorance of recent events and pretending to be very hostile to Christians and greatly indignant at hearing of the appearance of the Portuguese in Eastern Seas. “At this, he showed me yet greater honour, and told me everything, point by point. So, when I was well instructed, I said to him: ‘O friend, I beseech you in the name of the Prophet to tell me of some way to escape from the Caravan; for I would go to those who are the Christians’ bitterest foes. Take my word that, if they knew what I can do, they would search me out, even as far as Mecca.’ Then he: ‘By the faith of our Prophet, tell me, what can you do?’ I replied that I was the most skilful artificer in large mortars in the world. Hearing this, he exclaimed: ‘Mohammed be praised for ever, who has sent such an one to the Moslem and God.’” Whereupon, a bargain was struck.The Moor was ready to hide Varthema in his house, if Varthema could induce the Captain of the Caravan to pass fifteen camels, laden with spices, duty free.Varthema was so confident of having thoroughly ingratiated himself with the Captain that he was ready to negotiate for the free passage of a hundred camels, if the Moor owned so many.“And, when he heard this, he was greatly pleased,” and gave full information as to how to get to India.There was no difficulty about bribing the Captain; and the day before the departure of the caravan, Varthema stole to the Moor’s house and lay there in concealment.

Next morning, two hours before daybreak, bands of men, as was the usage, went through the city, sounding trumpets and other instruments, and proclaiming death to all Mamelukes who should not mount for the journey to Syria.“At this,” says Varthema, “my breast was mightily troubled, and I pleaded with tears to the merchant’s wife, and I besought God to save me.”Soon he had the relief of knowing that the caravan was gone, and the Moorish merchant with it.He had left instructions with his wife to send Varthema on to Jidda, on the Red Sea, with the caravan returning to India.It was to start later than the Syrian caravan.Varthema was a man of winning ways, and he found no difficulty in fascinating man or woman.He was far from being as vain as, say, Lord Herbert of Cherbury, but, like that ingenuous gentleman, he does not neglect to inform us when he has pleased the fair.“I cannot tell how much kindness I received from this lady, and, in particular, from her niece of fifteen years.They promised to make me rich if I would stay on.But I declined their offer by reason of the pressing peril.I set out at noontide of the following day, with the caravan, to the no small sorrow of these ladies, who made much lament.”

In due time the caravan arrived at Jidda, which was then a very important mart and harbour.Varthema immediately made for a mosque, with thousands of indigent pilgrims, and stayed there a whole fortnight.

“All day long, I lay on the ground, covered up in my garments, and groaning as if I suffered great pain in my bowels and body.The merchants would ask: ‘Who is that, groaning so?’Whereto the poor people about me would reply: ‘He is a poor Moslem who is dying.’But when night came I would leave the mosque to buy food.Judge of what my appetite became when I could only get food (and that bad) once a day.”

When the caravan had left the port, he contrived to see the master of a ship bound for Persia who agreed to take him as a passenger; and on the seventeenth day of hiding at Jidda, the ship put forth on the Red Sea.To a true Moslem, the whole Eastern world as far as China was barely more perilous than the Mediterranean was to a Christian.Those were days when the seas teemed with pirates; but, on land, property was better safeguarded by the despotic rulers of Asia than it was in Europe.But the line between Eastern and Western traffic was rigidly drawn at certain marts of exchange.Such were Aleppo and Beyrout for commodities forwarded by way of the Persian Gulf; and still more important were Cairo and Alexandria, the marts of Mediterranean and Red Sea commerce.The Eastern trade was mainly in the hands of Arabs; but it was pursued by certain Greeks, Albanians and Circassians also, who, or their forefathers, had renounced Christianity for gain; and these were not few.Jidda and other ports of the Red Sea, as well as those of Somaliland, were crowded with ships, great and small, bearing spices, drugs, dyes and other Eastern goods for the markets of Western Asia and Europe.The Arabian coast of the Red Sea was hugged, and often, for days together, no progress could be made at night; for the multitude of rocks and sunken reefs rendered navigation perilous enough, even by day, and a look-out was always kept at the mast-head.

Varthema’s ship visited and made some stay at several ports which are now decayed.At one place, “coming in sight of dwellings on the shore, fourteen of us landed to buy victuals.But they were the folk called Bedouin; there was more than a hundred of them to our fourteen; and they greeted us with slings and stones.We fought for about an hour; and then they fled, leaving twenty-four of their number lying slain on the ground; for they were unclad, and the sling was their only weapon.We took all we could find, that is to say fowls, calves, oxen and other things for eating.But, in two or three hours time, the turmoil increased, and so did the natives of the land—to more than six hundred, in fact—and we were compelled to draw back to our ships.”

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CHAPTER V.CERTAIN ADVENTURES IN
ARABIA THE HAPPY.

On arriving at Aden; which was a place of call for every ship trading with India, Persia, and Ethiopia, custom-house officers at once came on board the ship, ascertained whence and when it had sailed, the nature of its freight, and how many were on board. Then the masts, sails, rudders and anchors were removed to ensure the payment of dues. On the second day after Varthema’s arrival, a passenger or sailor on board called him a “Christian dog, son of a dog,” the usual polished address of the proud Moslem to one who, albeit a co-believer, had not the good fortune to be born in the faith. This exclamation aroused a suspicion that he was a spy; for, a year before, Portuguese had appeared for the first time in the Arabian Sea, had captured certain vessels, and killed many of their crews. He was seized at once and violently carried off to the deputy of the Sultan of Yemen. Now this Sultan was an unusually merciful man, who rarely (Varthema says never) put anyone to death; so he was merely clapped into gaol, and his legs fettered with eighteen pounds weight of iron. On the third day of imprisonment, some Moslem sailors who had escaped in the warfare with the Portuguese, attacked the prison with the intention of slaying him; and the inhabitants were divided as to what they should do. The Emir’s deputy decided to spare the prisoners (another suspected person would seem to have been incarcerated with Varthema); and they languished sixty-five days in gaol. Then a message came from the Sultan, demanding that they should be brought before himself. So, instead of voyaging to Persia, Varthema, still in irons, was put on a camel and taken an eight days’ journey inland to Radâä. Ibn Abd-el Wahâb, Sultan of Yemen, was busy marshalling a large army. In it, were three thousand horsemen, born of Christian parents, but sold, while still children, by “Prester John,” as the Portuguese called the King of Abyssinia. These slaves formed the bodyguard of the Sultan. At this moment the rule of Yemen was disputed among petty despots, and the Sultan was bent on reducing the turbulent, rebellious tribes to his sole sway.

Varthema is brought in to the Sultan’s presence; his life hangs on a hair; it is as if the sharp edge of the scimitar were already at his neck; yet he does not lose his presence of mind. “I am of the country of Rûm, my lord,” he began; and he began with a “parliamentary expression” for, to an Arab, Rûm meant Asia Minor, recently the possession of New Rome, i.e., of the Byzantine Empire.“I became a Mohammedan at Cairo (another trifling inexactitude).I came to Medina of the Prophet, to Mecca, and then to your country.Everyone says, sir, that you are a sheik” (a Mohammedan priest).“Sir, I am your slave.Sir, do you not know that I am a Moslem?”The Sultan called upon him to repeat the formula: “‘There is no God but the God: Mohammed is the Prophet of God.’But, whether it was the will of God, or by reason of fear which gat hold of me, I could not pronounce these words.”Our hero was indeed lucky, for the merciful Sultan only ordered him to be taken to prison and kept there under strict guard while he should be away.For he was about to attack Sanäa, the ancient capital of Yemen.And so, “they guarded me for three months, supplying me with a loaf of millet each morning, and another in the evening; yet six such loaves had not satisfied my hunger for a single day; nevertheless, if I might have had my fill of water, I had thought myself happy.”

In the East, the body of an insane person is believed to be occupied by some spirit; and mad folk are therefore treated as irresponsible.Varthema knew this, and he, two fellow-prisoners, one of whom he twice speaks of as “my companion,” and yet another, “a Moor,” arranged that one of the number should pretend to be mad in order to help the others. The trick is time-honoured in the East; thereby David escaped the hands of Achish, King of Gath. Lots were cast, and the lot fell to Varthema. We can see him, like the Israelite King, “changing his behaviour, scrabbling at the doors of the gate, and letting the spittle fall down upon his beard”; he was allowed to go out, crowds of children following him and shying stones at him. In self-defence he had to store up a plentiful supply of like missiles in his garment and give a sharp return. “Truly,” says he, “I never was so tired with labour and worn out as during the first three days of my feigning.”

Now, the prison adjoined the palace; and there remained in the palace one of the Sultan’s three wives with her “twelve or thirteen very comely maidens, rather more than inclining to black.This queen” (so Varthema dubs her) “was very tender-hearted to me.She was for ever at her lattice with her damsels, staying there throughout the day to see me and to talk with me; and I, while many men and merchants were jeering at me, went naked before the queen; for she took very great pleasure in seeing me.I might not go from her sight; and she gave me right good food to eat; so that I gained my point.”

One of the most striking characteristics of the men of the Renaissance is the combination of great intellectual power and lofty enthusiasm with mediæval brutality.Now, the Sultana, in whose veins the warm blood of the East flowed freely, suffered from the dull monotony of the harem.She wanted excitement.She suggested to the supposed madman that he should slay and spare not; for the fault would not be imputed to him.He took the hint at once.He called on a fat sheep to declare its religion, repeating the very words which the Sultan had addressed to him: “Prove yourself a Moslem.”“The patient beast making no reply, I took a staff and broke its legs. The queen looked on laughing, and fed me with the flesh thereof during three days; nor do I remember to have eaten better. Three days later, I killed an ass, which was bringing water to the palace, in the same way; because that he would not become a Moslem. And, in like manner, I cudgelled a Jew, so that I left him for dead.” One of the gaolers, whom he declares to have been more mad than he, called him “Christian dog, son of a dog.” This was enough: a fierce battle by lapidation began—Varthema alone, on the one side; the gaoler and children on the other. Varthema allowed himself to be badly hit by two stones, “which I could have avoided easily; but I wanted to give colour to my madness. So I went back to my prison, and blocked the door up with large stones, and there I lived for the space of two days without meat or drink. The queen and others thought I might be dead, and caused the door to be broken open. Then these dogs brought me pieces of marble saying, ‘eat; this is sugar;’ and others gave me grapes filled with earth, and called it salt; but I ate the marble and grapes and everything, all mixed up.”

It was an enlightened custom in Mohammedan countries to examine into the mental condition of insane people at regular intervals.Rabbi Benjamin, of Tudela, the Spanish Jew, tells us that, in the sixth decade of the Twelfth Century, he found Commissioners in lunacy at Baghdad; although he also speaks of that barbarous practice of chaining the madman which obtained in England until some centuries later.Two Mohammedan Ascetics, who dwelt in the mountains as hermits, were brought to the prison to determine whether Varthema might be a person bereft of mere mundane reason through his exceptional sanctity, or only ordinarily mad.The hermits took opposite views on this knotty question, and spent an hour in violently contradicting one another.The prisoner lost all patience and, anxious to be quit of them, put a stop to the discussion by the simple device which Gulliver employed to extinguish the conflagration at Lilliput. “Whereupon,” says he, “they ran off crying ‘he is mad; he is no saint.’ The queen and her maidens saw all this, for they were looking on from their casement, and burst into laughter, vowing that ‘by God, by the head of the Prophet, there is no one in the world like this man.’ ”

Next day Varthema followed this up by laying hold of the gaoler by those two horns or tufts of hair which were then, as now, fashionable in Arabia, kneeling on his stomach, and so belabouring him that he “left him for dead,” like the Jew.The queen was again vastly entertained, and called out: “Kill those beasts.”

But it was discovered that, all this time, Varthema’s fellow-prisoners had been digging a hole through the prison wall, and, moreover, had contrived to get free from their shackles.The Sultan’s deputy was fully aware of the favour with which the Sultana regarded Varthema; and the lady knew him to be ready to carry out her commands.She ordered the prisoner to be kept in irons, but to be removed into a doorless lower chamber of the palace, and to be provided with a good bed, good food and perfumed baths.For, as the reader will guess, she had fallen in love with the captive.Sexual love among Arabians is anything but a refined or spiritual passion; and the harem has not been found precisely a temple of chastity anywhere,—mainly, perhaps, because it is a harem.And this lady possessed a temperament as sanguine and scandalous as any Messalina or Faustina or Empress of all the Russias.Alas!Fate doomed her to bloom unseen in Arabia, and waste her sweetness on its desert air.At the end of a few days, she started by bringing Varthema some dainty dish in the dead of night.He tells us how, “coming into my chamber, she called ‘Jonah!Come.Are you hungry?’‘Yes, by Allah!’I replied; and I rose to my feet and went to her in my shirt.And she said: ‘No, no, not with your shirt on.’ I answered: ‘O Lady, I am not mad now’; whereto she: ‘By Allah, I know you never were mad.In the world there is no man like you.’So, to please her, I took off my shirt, holding it before me for the sake of decency; and thus did she keep me for a space of two hours, gazing at me as if I had been a nymph, and making her plaint to God in this wise: ‘O Allah!Thou hast made this man white as the sun.Me, Thou hast made black.O Allah!O Prophet!my husband is black; my son is black; this man is white.Would that this man might become my husband!And while speaking thus, she wept and sighed continuously, and kept passing her hands over me all the time, and promising that she would make the Sultan remove my irons when he returned.’

“Next night the queen came with two of her damsels, and said, ‘Come hither, Jonah.’I replied that I would come.‘Would you like me to come and stay a little while with you,’ she asked.I answered, ‘no, lady.I am in chains; and that is enough.’Then she said, ‘Have no fear.I take it all on my own head.If you do not want me, I will call Gazelle, or Tajiah, or Gulzerana to come instead.’She spoke thus because she was working to come herself.But I never gave way; for I had thought it all out.”

Varthema had no desire to remain in Yemen, even should he mount its throne,—a far less likely event than discovery and a horrible death.“I did not wish to lose both my soul and my body,” he writes.“I wept all night, commending myself to God.”

“Three days after this the Sultan returned, and straightway the queen sent to tell me that, if I would stay with her, she would make me rich.”

Sufficient unto the day is the evil thereof.Varthema is the man to mould circumstances to his will: no web, however cunningly woven shall hold him prisoner; his keen wit is ready to comply with the Sultana’s request, if she will have his fetters struck off.

The lady fell into the trap.She manifests the clever, feminine guile of the harem in her dealings with Ibn Abd-el-Wahâb, but she is no match for Varthema.The Sultan is a strong man and a mighty man of valour; but he is uxorious, and as wax in her hands.She ordered the prisoner to be brought at once before the Sultan and herself.Ibn Abd-el-Wahâb, good easy man, asked Varthema whither he desired to go if he should choose to release him.The mendacious Italian replied: “‘O Lord, I have neither father nor mother; wife nor child; brother nor sister; only Allah, the Prophet, and you.You give me food, and I am your slave.’And I wept without ceasing.”Then the artful Sultana reminded the Sultan that he would have to account to God, of whose anger he should beware, for having kept an innocent man so long time in prison.Abd-el-Wahâb proved as unsuspicious and benevolent as history declares him to have been; yet he was as firm and able as a ruler as he was bold and experienced in arms. His Sultana knew how to play on his merits and convert them into defects.He at once granted Varthema liberty to go whithersoever he chose.“And, immediately, he had my irons struck off; and I knelt before him; and kissed his feet and the hands of the queen.She took me by the hand, saying: ‘Come with me, poor wight, for I know thou art dying of hunger.’When I was with her in her chamber, she kissed me more than a hundred times; and then she gave me excellent food.But I had seen her speak privily to the Sultan, and I thought she had begged me from him for a slave.Wherefore, I said: ‘I will not eat, unless you promise me my freedom.’She replied: ‘Be silent, madman.You know not what Allah will bestow.If you are good, you shall be an Emir.’Now, I knew what kind of lordship she desired to bestow on me; so I answered that she should let me get into fitter condition; for fear filled me with other than amorous thoughts.She replied: ‘By Allah, you say well.I will give you eggs, fowls, pigeons, pepper, cinnamon, cloves and cocoa-nuts every day.’17 So, at these good words and promises, I plucked up heart a bit. To restore me to health, I stayed fifteen or twenty days in the palace. One day, she sent for me and asked if I would go a-hunting with her; which offer I refused not; and, at our return, feigned me to fall sick by reason of weakness; and so continued for the space of eight days; during which time she was unceasing in sending persons to visit me. One day, I sent to tell her that I had vowed to God and Mohammed to visit a holy man at Aden, who was reputed to work miracles.”

We may not count meanness among the petits défauts of this lady of spacious passions. She was “well pleased” with Varthema’s suggestion, and provided him with a camel and twenty-five golden ducats—a sum which would go a long way in Arabia. We shall see presently to what use he applied it. Eight days’ journeying brought him to the holy man of Aden; and the second day after his arrival, he professed that he was cured. He wrote to the Sultana that, since Allah had been so merciful, he wished to see the whole of her kingdom. “This I did because the fleet which was there could not set sail again for a month. I spoke with a skipper in secret, and told him I wished to go to India, and would give him a handsome present if he would take me. He replied that he wished to touch at Persia first.” Nothing better could have fallen in with Varthema’s wishes. Meanwhile he would explore Arabia Felix.

So, having adroitly contrived to reject the love of the Light of the Harem without exciting her fury, and even coming by her purse, he turns the opportune gift to account, and fills up the month of waiting by a zig-zag camel-ride through Southern Yemen—the first and boldest European traveller in the district, and the one who has penetrated

it must thoroughly.With the intention of doing this in his mind, he ends his chapters on “How the women of Arabia Felix are partial to White Men,” and on “The liberality of the Queen.”

His record of Southern Yemen bears witness to a shrewd observant eye and a tenacious memory.Probably he travelled mostly with caravans.He gives an account of the natural features of the land, its curious domesticated animals, its wild beasts, its vegetable productions, its trade, the colour, manners and dress of its strange natives—all borne out by a variety of independent testimony.He visited many cities.One, he found barbarous and poor; another, renowned for its attar of roses.Several of these towns were flourishing centres of trade.He even got to Sanäa, the walls whereof were so wide that “eight horses might go abreast on the top of them.”Apparently Abd-el-Wahâb had not yet conquered the petty chieftain, El Mansûr, who reigned there; so Varthema found himself in the domain of the Sultan’s bitter foe.We hear that rumour gave this ruler a mad son who would bite, and slay, and then feed on his human victims. Varthema again tells us of other madmen, Shiites and Sunnites, the rival sects of the Mohammedan world, who kill each other like dogs for Religion’s sake.At Yerim, he talked with many who asserted that they had reached their hundred and twenty-fifth year; but, since there was no registration of birth, we may venture to entertain our doubts.He tells us how it was the fashion throughout Arabia to twist the hair into horns, and how the women wore loose trousers.He came to El-Makrana, where “the Sultan keeps more gold than a hundred camels might bear; and I say this because I have seen it.”What became of that mighty bulk of gold?The Arabian chroniclers tell us the firm, merciful and increasing rule of Abd-el-Wahâb in Yemen had a tragic end: Turkish invaders captured him and put him to death, not in the heat of warfare, but in cold blood.

Varthema “ran some risk from the multitude of apes” (of which Niebuhr also speaks), and from “animals like lions (hyenas?)We passed on in very great danger from the said animals, and with no little hunting of them.However, we killed very many with bows and slings and dogs; and thereby passed in safety.”

On reaching Aden he repeated the trick which had proved so successful at Jidda.“I took shelter in a mosque,” he says, “feigning to be sick, and there I lurked all day long; but, at night, I went forth to find the skipper of the ship; and he smuggled me aboard.”

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CHAPTER VI.EASTWARD HO!

For six days the wind was favourable; but it was now December of the year 1503; and on the seventh day out, the North Eastern monsoon drove the vessel back “with 25 others, laden with madder for the dyeing of clothes. By dint of very great labour, we made the port of Zeila” (on the African Coast, opposite to Aden); “and tarried there five days both to see it and to wait for better weather.” Zeila was a great place for traffic in gold and ivory, the law was well administered; but the cruel slave-trade prevailed there then as, in a different form, it did up to our own times. The Christian dominions of Abyssinian “Prester John” were raided by Arabs; his subjects captured; and sold in Egypt, Arabia, Persia and India. The merchants here would seem to have found a profitable trade in beasts left with but a single horn; for Varthema saw some, which, however, were quite different from those wonderful unicorns at Mecca. He gives a faithful description of the black and white Berbera sheep of Zeila.

The weather having improved, the ship touched at Berbera, and then sailed up the Gulf of Aden and across the Arabian Sea.Twelve days saw her at Diu, an island to the south of the Indian Peninsula of Kathiawar and subject to the Sultan of Gujarat.Varthema calls it the “port of the Turks”; but by Turks we must understand Mohammedan inhabitants of the Levant who had settled at Diu.It was an important halt for ships trading between India and Arabia and Persia.The vessel which bore Varthema must have been a tramp, picking up what cargo offered, and altering her course from time to time, to dispose of it; for, after spending two days at Diu, we find her taking a three days run up the Gulf of Cambay to Gogo, a place “of great traffic, fat, and rich; where all are Mohammedans.”She now recrossed the ocean to Eastern Arabia, and put in at Julfar, on the shores of Oman. Once again she reversed her course; and a favourable wind bore her to Muscat, a port which is still of some importance, and which, at that time, was one of the small independent States of Arabia. Then she tacked back, and came to New Ormuz, a port on the island of Jeruan.

Old Ormuz was a city on the mainland, which Marco Polo visited in the eighth decade of the Thirteenth Century, but, shortly after his time, almost all the population deserted the old city for the island.As in the days of Ibn Batûta it was famous for its pearl-fisheries.“Here,” writes Varthema, “are found the largest pearls in the world”; and hence it is that Milton couples the wealth of Ormuz with that of India.18 “At three days’ voyage from this island, fishers pay out ropes, one from either end of their little boats. To each rope, a big stone is tied, so as to keep the boat moored; and they pay out yet another rope to the bottom, with a stone to it, from the middle of the boat, whereby one of these fishermen, having hung two bags round his neck and tied a big stone to his feet, goes down fifteen paces into the water, and stays there as long as he is able, to find those oysters wherein are pearls. These he puts into the bag, and gets quit of the stone at his feet, and comes up by one of the ropes aforesaid.” The pearl-diver is not given the wholly impossible time under water which Ibn Batûta credited him with. With customary caution our Italian is content to say that he “stays there as long as he is able.”

This trade and the city of Ormuz were in the hands of Arabs, who paid tribute to the King of Persia, and were dependent for food on the mainland. Ormuz was one of the great centres along that trade-route between the East and the Levant, which traversed the Persian Gulf, and made its way by Bagdad, and the Euphrates Valley and Aleppo to the Mediterranean; just as Aden was one of the great centres of the other route through the Red Sea and Egypt to Cairo and Alexandria.Our traveller would pass along streets crowded with men from many nations.

From Ormuz comes a tale of cold-blooded parricide, fratricide, and subtle perfidy very characteristic of the dynastic families of Asia.“At the time when I visited this land, there happened that which you shall hear.”The Sultan of Ormuz had eleven sons, of whom the youngest was judged to lack half his wits, and the eldest was, beyond doubt, “a devil unchained.”This Sultan had purchased two Abyssinian children, and brought them up as carefully as if they had been his own sons; for it was a practice in Arabia and India to rely on the valour and sagacity of Abyssinian slaves, to entrust them with the most important military commands, and to consult them as closest advisers.One of these men was named Caim; the other Mohammed.One night, when, all was dark and silent in the palace, that “devil unchained,” the eldest son found an opportunity to put out the eyes of his father, his mother and all his brethren excepting those of his youngest brother; for he supposed him to be incapable of aspiring to the throne.Not satisfied with blinding his victims, he caused them to be burned alive within the palace-enclosure.Next morning he proclaimed himself Sultan; and the supposed fool fled to a mosque; for the rights of sanctuary were to be found there, if anywhere.At first, the city was in tumult; but the bloody deed was over and done with; and a city of trade is soon glad to quiet down and resume business.The problem now before the new Sultan was: how to get rid of Caim and Mohammed.Both men were in high position: that were a small matter; but they held command of fortresses.Somehow, he managed to get Mohammed to venture into his presence, and, after making much of him, breathed into his ear that, if he would slay Caim, he should be rewarded with the command of five fortresses. Mohammed protested: “‘O Sidi, I have shared bread with him from our childhood; for thirty years. By Allah, I cannot bring my mind to do this thing.’ Then said the Sultan: ‘Well, let it alone.’ ” Having failed in the attempt to induce Mohammed to murder Caim, the Sultan now tried to induce Caim to murder Mohammed. Caim made not the least demur, and straightway sought out his old friend and companion. Mohammed at once read what had happened written in the face of his false friend, and charged him with the fact. Caim, guilt-stricken, cast his dagger at the feet of Mohammed, fell on his knees, and implored forgiveness of the meditated crime. Mohammed reproached Caim in the mildest way, and then either from magnanimity or from policy, or from both, he passed over his treachery; but made him vow to go to the Sultan and pretend that he had done the deed.

“When the Sultan saw him, he demanded: ‘Hast thou slain thy friend?’Caim answered: ‘I have, Sidi, by Allah!’Then the Sultan: ‘Come here’; and Caim went close up to him; whereupon, the Sultan seized him and did him to death with his dagger.”Three days passed, and then Mohammed stole stealthily into the Sultan’s chamber, who, when he saw him, was greatly perturbed, and exclaimed: ‘O dog, son of a dog, are thou still alive?’Mohammed replied: ‘Yea, I live, in spite of thee, and thee will I slay, thou worse than dog or devil!’Both men being armed, they fought together for a space of time; but in the end, Mohammed killed the Sultan, and put the palace into a state of defence.But, because he was much beloved, the populace ran thither with shouts of ‘Long live Sultan Mohammed.’

Mohammed was a man as prudent and experienced as he was ready and resolute: he saw a way to do the state good service and to preserve for himself the reality of power while maintaining the shows of legality and removing the occasions of envy. At the end of twenty days, he call the chief citizens together, “and spake to them in this wise: That what he had done had been of strong necessity; that he knew he had no right to the throne; and that he begged them to allow him to transfer his power to the son who was supposed to be crazy. And thus the son became Sultan; but, nevertheless Mohammed rules. The whole city said, ‘of a surety, this man is the friend of Allah.’ For which reason, he was made Governor of the City and of the Sultan; the Sultan being in the state aforesaid.”

A very narrow little strait lies between Ormuz and the mainland of Persia.Varthema left his “tramp,” and crossed over.His itinerary through the ancient and renowned Empire is by no means clear; but we find him at Herat, 600 miles in a bee-line from Ormuz, and at that time the capital of Khôrasân and the residence of its able ruler—Sultan Hosein Mirza, a man who boasted his descent from Timour the Tartar.Varthema speaks of Herat as being a great market for stuffs, especially silk stuffs, and for rhubarb.Badger, commenting on this statement, suggests that Herat lay on the direct route along which rhubarb was conveyed between Thibet, Mongolia, and the West.Certainly exports and imports of Persia, India, Turkestan and Afghanistan passed through Herat.

It strikes one as singular that, although Varthema Would seem to have journeyed some 1,500 miles in Persia, he says very little about the country.This may be because the Venetians were directly acquainted with that fascinating Empire; and consequent on this, a general knowledge of it would spread throughout Italy.For, when the great blow was struck at Venetian trade by the Turkish capture of Constantinople and Negroponte, and the “Queen of the Adriatic” no longer held “the gorgeous East in fee,” she sent three separate embassies on a bold and perilous mission. She sought to secure the alliance of Persia against their common foe, the Ottoman Turk. Few records of travel and adventure are more animating or fuller of interest than those of the Venetian Ambassadors, Barbaro and Contarini.19 Varthema must have made a bold journey. The “Adventures of Hadji Baba of Ispahan” probably furnish as true and vivid a picture of what life and travel in Persia were like in the early years of the sixteenth century as they do of that which was to be experienced in the early years of the nineteenth century, Persia has remained in the same case of what may be called immutable instability from the days when she was won for Islam down to the days of the immortal Morier and to our own times.

From Herat, he took the caravan-route back to Shiraz in Persia, a journey of fully 700 miles.Here was a great mart for the turquoises, rubies and other jewels of Khôrasân and Badakshan, as well as for musk and ultramarine; and he learned something of the business capacity of the Persian; he complains that “our musk”—that delight, with other overpowering scents of his nation and time—“is adulterated by these folk, who are master-hands for intellect, and misleaders beyond all other peoples.”

It is a problem how Varthema contrived to cover such vast distances on what was probably a lean purse. He is silent as to his financial resources; as we have said it is unlikely that his private means were considerable, and it would seem that he did not trade. As a Mameluke he would receive payment which carried him to Aden; and the money which the enamoured Sultana furnished him with would partly, if not wholly, give him the means to reach Persia. But he employed his infinite power to charm; he was burthened with no weak scruple as to blinding a newly-captured friend and using him, with wise moderation, in the service of that central purpose which was the heart of all his being.And thus, as we shall presently see, like Iago, he made his fool his purse.But he is capable of appreciating the good qualities of the generous friend whom he made his dupe; and is careful to pay tribute to him.If he must deceive in order to use him, it is to realize his purpose of seeing the world at first-hand and recording its wonders.

After remarking on the tricks of Persian traders, he adds: “Yet I must also say they are the best companions and the most generous among men.I speak thus with knowledge; having had experience of a Persian merchant of Herat in Khôrasân, whom I met in this city of Shiraz.He had known me at Mecca two years before, and spoke to me thus: ‘Jonah, what is your business here?Are you not the same man who went to Mecca some time back?’I replied that I was, and that to find out about the world was the quest I was on.Then said he: ‘Allah be praised!for I shall have a companion to make discovery with me.Do not leave me.’We stayed on fifteen days in this same city of Shiraz.”Varthema’s magnetic charm was at work; and luck stood his friend in bringing him across this old acquaintance.

The twain set off together from Shiraz, bound for Samarkand in Turkestan; for the merchant, whose name Was Cazazionor, insisted on keeping Varthema with him, and presumably payed all expenses.But they travelled through a land in turmoil.The struggle between the Ottoman Turks established in Europe and the Turcoman dynasty of the White Sheep established in Persia was happy indeed for the Christian world, since it diverted the forces of Constantinople to the East at a time when Europe lay divided and helpless, but it was disastrous for Persia and ended by throwing her into confusion.Just now Ismail-es-Sufi, a descendant from the Prophet, who had overthrown the forces of Bayazid, and laid the foundations of a great Persian dynasty, which endured more than two centuries, was consolidating a country which had been torn by internecine strife. As is so often the case, religious differences afforded the trumpet-call to the struggles of peoples. As in the days of Ibn Batûta the Sunnites of the West fought the Shiites of the East for domination; but they fought in the name of Allah and under the banners of sectarian difference. In order to seat himself firmly on the throne, the Great Sofi, for so Europeans called the monarch of the new, able and powerful dynasty roused the enthusiasm of the native Shiites, and converted the less numerous native Sunnites to his own true faith by blood and iron. Varthema tells us that the Sofi was passing through the land with flame and slaughter.

Cazazionor, finding the country so disturbed, thought it wise to return towards Herat.So delighted was he with the personality and society of “Jonah” that he offered to give him his niece to wife.She was a beautiful girl named Sharus, a feminine noun in Persian as in other languages, although it signifies The Sun.Cazazionor took Varthema with him to his own home; which was probably at Shiraz; and presented the young lady to him.She could not have attained womanhood; for he was allowed to see her.He feigned delight at her beauty; but he says that his mind was “bent to other things”—probably less on wife and children at home than on his still insatiate desire for travel.After enjoying Cazazionor’s hospitality for eight days, he returned with his host to Ormuz, and took ship for Sind.They were landed at Joah, a port on the delta of the Indus, and proceeded to Cambay, an important harbour in Gujarat, whence fifty ships, laden with cotton, sailed yearly to different lands.

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CHAPTER VII.

THE PAGANS OF NARSINGA.

Before Batûta reached India, and therefore long before Varthema’s time, Afghan chiefs had swooped down on the fertile plains of India with the war cry of “Allah and the Prophet,” and Northern India, with the exception of its southern and western districts, where the Rajpoots maintained their independence, was now under the rule of various Moslem despots. The Deccan was under the sway of a powerful Moslem dynasty—the Brahmany Sultans; but what is now the presidency of Madras and Mysore was divided into a number of petty kingdoms, subject to the Hindu Râja of Narsinga. A full century of conflict had resulted in a partial triumph of the Moslem: the sovereigns of Narsinga paid a certain tribute to be left at peace, although the western coast was, in a measure, protected by a wall of mountains. But Portuguese traders had just sailed into the Arabian Sea and had established themselves here and there at trading stations on the Malabar coast; and these they had fortified. On his outward journey, Varthema, for obvious reasons, showed no disposition to cultivate the acquaintance of these Christian Europeans.

Gujarat was under the rule of Fath Khân, whom Varthema calls Sultan Machamuth.“You shall now hear of the manner of his life.He and all his people are Mohammedans; and he keeps twenty thousand horsemen always with him.When he arises in the morning, fifty elephants, each with a man atop, come to the palace and do him reverence; and this is all the labour they are put to....When he eats, fifty or sixty different kinds of music discourse; such as trumpets, different sorts of drums, recorders and fifes, and many others; and the elephants again do him reverence....The Sultan’s moustachios are so long that he ties them up over his head, as a woman doth tie her tresses; and his beard, which is white, comes down to his girdle.” Fath Khân was greatly dreaded by his subjects; and they believed strange things concerning him; stories which are worthy of the Arabian Nights. These Varthema heard and set down, as did Barbosa, who travelled in the East a few years after the Sultan’s death. Machamuth was reputed to eat poison daily, so that, while he himself had become poison-proof, he had only to spit at a foe and death followed within half an hour. “Every night that he shall sleep with one of his three or four thousand women, they shall take her up dead in the morning.”

The Sultan was continually at war with a neighbouring Hindu Râja; and his Kingdom of Gujarat had been taken from the Jains—“a race which eats of nothing wherein courseth blood, and will kill nothing that hath life.They are neither Moors nor heathens; and I believe that, if they should be baptised, they would all be saved by their good works; for they never do unto others what they would not that others should do unto them.For dress, some wear a shirt; some, only a cloth round their middle and a large red cloth on their head; and their colour is tawny.And the aforesaid Sultan took their kingdom from them because of their goodness.”

These Jains, who at first, mainly differed from Buddhists in believing that the purification of the soul resulted in a Heaven and not in Nirvâna, and the relation of whose creed to Buddhism is far from being clear, had built some of their remote and mysterious temples on the heights of Gujarat, where through clouds of incense, female figures, clothed in scarlet and gold might be seen, weaving strange figures and chanting monotonous psalms. But these, Varthema, posing as a pious Mohammedan, might not see; and he makes no reference to the famous temples of Gujarat.

From Cambay, the Persian and our Italian sailed along the coast to Chaul; thence to a port which has disappeared but which was near Ratnagiri, on the Concan coast; and thence to the island of Goa. “On this island there is a fortress by the sea, kept by a Mameluke with four hundred other Mamelukes. If the captain shall come across any white man he gives him much wage; but first he sends for two jerkins, made of leather, one for him and one for him that wishes to take service; each puts on a jerkin, and they fall to. If he prove himself a strong man, he is put among the able men; but if not, he is set to other task than that of fighting. The captain wages great battle with the Râja of Narsinga” (Bijayanagar the capital of the Carnatic).

From Goa, seven days of land-travel brought the pair to “the city of Decan” (Bîjapûr), a Mohammedan place where “the King lives in great pride and pomp.Many of them that serve him have their very shoes adorned with rubies, diamonds, and other jewels; so you may judge how many garnish their fingers and ears.They wear robes or shirts of silk, shoes and breeches after the style of sailors; and ladies go quite veiled, as in Damascus.”

Thence they returned to the coast, and visited ports, many of which have decayed or disappeared.These were subject, but not always friendly, to the Râja of Narsinga; and the Kinglet of Honawar was friendly to the Portuguese.But in spite of incessant warfare, life and property were respected.The journey now lies along the Malabar coast to Cannanore: “the port to which steeds are brought from Persia, and you must know that the levy for each horse is twenty-five ducats....Here we began to meet with spices.”Here, also, were Portuguese established.

They now turned their steps to Narsinga, where Heemrâj held his court.Varthema calls him “King,” and indeed he ruled, for like the Frank “Mayors of the palace,” he had gradually usurped the powers of the real Râja, and held actual sway in the place of an ancient race which boasted an uninterrupted succession lasting seven centuries. The city was great and grand; the court, splendid; the revenue, enormous; the army boasted 40,000 horsemen and 400 elephants, and was constantly doing battle with the Moslem and neighbouring Pagan States. “The elephant wears armour; in particular, head and trunk are armed. To the trunk a sword of two arms’ length is fastened, and as broad as a man’s hand.” “Seven armed men go upon the said elephant,” shielded by a sort of castle, “And in that manner they fight.” “The King wears a cap of cloth of gold; and a quilted garment of cotton when he goes to the wars; over this a garment beset with gold coins; and all manner of jewels are at the border thereof. His horse wears jewels which are of more value than are some of our cities. When he journeys for pleasure, three or four kings and five or six thousand horsemen attend him. Wherefore, one may account him a most powerful prince. The common people go naked save for a loin-cloth.... In this realm you may go where you list in safety; but it behoves you to beware of lions on the way.”

Varthema was very much impressed by the singular structure and equally singular habits of the elephant, and he speaks admiringly of its sagacity and strength.He devotes a considerable space to this noble beast; gives us the most accurate details; and recurs to the subject over and over again.

The Persian jewel-merchant and he left Narsinga after two days’ stay, and visited places which were of much importance then, but which have disappeared from the modern map.At last, they arrive at Calicut.

“Having come to the place where the greatest fame of India is gathered up” our traveller devotes the whole of his second book concerning India to Calicut and the manners and customs of its people, as being those of all the inhabitants of that part of the peninsula which lies between the Malabar and Coromandel coasts.From time out of mind Calicut had been a famous emporium; to it calico owes its name. When Islam arose, the spread of the Mohammedan faith stimulated the enterprise of the intrepid Arab sailor and merchant and of the renegade from Eastern Europe and Western Asia. The activity of the hardy Arab found scope by reason of the natural indolence of the Hindu and his dislike of the sea. A rich and well organized traffic sprang up between Persia and Arabia on the one side and China and the Spice Islands on the other. Even in China, the Arab contrived to settle; and Calicut remained the chief centre of the Eastern trade. Here, in the season of calm, might be seen the leviathan junks of China; and, at all times, the ships of every civilized Eastern people. But, by the time Varthema reached Calicut, the Arab had found Malacca to be a more convenient mart for the trade of the far-East; and Calicut, a little fallen from her high estate, had become mainly a market for the products of Southern India and Ceylon, and a port of call. And yet greater change was at hand. One of those new routes had been opened up which from time to time, abase the pride of commercial nations and transfer their wealth: the Portuguese rounded the Cape, reached East Africa, broke across the Ocean, and, in 1498, Vasco di Gama anchored off Calicut. The jealous Arabs burned down the factory which the native ruler had allowed the Portuguese to erect, and fierce seafights ensued, which were accompanied by much brutality. The contest was between the best sailors of Europe and the huge, but ill-built and ill-navigated fleets of the Arab traders. The latter were unable to expel or even to discourage the invaders, who, incensed at opposition, shewed no mercy, and suffered from severe reprisal. While Varthema was at Calicut, the Zamorin (as its ruler was called by those English travellers who arrived a little later) “agreed that the Moors should slay forty-eight Portuguese, whom I saw put to death. And for this reason the King of Portugal is always at war, and daily kills very many; and thereby the city is ruined, for in every way it is at war.” Our traveller arrived at Calicut at the precise time when India, cast into a welter by Mohammedan aggression in its lust for wealth and dominion, was confronted with the yet more insatiate greed of European adventures for fabled gold and direct markets. The competitors vied with one another in all the arts of treachery, cruelty and fraud.

Calicut was a city of mean appearance, occupying an area of about a mile; but the “compounds” were spread over a space of six miles. It was crowded with traders from Ethiopia, Arabia and Persia, Syria and the Levant, Bengal and Sumatra. Varthema calculates that no less than fifteen thousand Moors were domiciled there. He visited the palace of the Zamorin, which was divided into chambers by wooden partitions, on which supernatural beings were carved—beings named dêvas in the Indian Scriptures, and taken by our Italian for devils. The flooring was a preparation of cow-dung, used then, as it is to-day, for its antiseptic properties. Ramna and Krishna and a demon-goddess called Mariamma were the chief objects of worship; so we are not surprised when we read that, in the “chapel” of the palace, the oil-lamps were set on tripods, “on each side whereof are three devils, in relievo, very fearful to behold.Such are the squires that bear lights to the King.”The chapel was small, but its wooden door was elaborately “carven with devils.In the middle of it is a devil seated, all in bronze; and the devil wears a three-fold crown, like unto that of the Papacy.He has four horns and four teeth, a huge mouth and nose, and his eyes strike terror into him that looketh thereon.Devils are figured around the said chapel; and on each side thereof a Satan is seated, in flaming fire, wherein are a great number of souls.And, the said Satan has a soul to his mouth with his right hand and with his left hand he grips a soul by its middle.”Perchance the chapel recalled memories of pictured hells on the walls of the Pisan Campo Santo, or of certain other mediæval frescoes at Florence.

He went to a great religious festival near Calicut.“Truly,” he says, “never did I see so many gathered together save at Mecca.From fifteen days’ journey round about came all the Nairs and Brâhmans to sacrifice.”Passing through trees which bore lights innumerable, one came to a tank, wherein the worshippers first bathed before entering the temple, which stood up from the middle of the tank.It had “two rows of columns, like San Giovanni in Fonte at Rome.”The head Brâhmans first anointed the heads of the worshippers with oil, and then burned incense, with elaborate ritual, and offered the sacrifice of a cock at an altar laden with flowers.“At one end of the altar is a Satan, which all go up to worship, and then depart, each on his own way.”

Early in the morning, it is the duty of the Brâhman to bathe in a tank of still water, and then to wash the idols with perfumed water; after which he burns incense before them; nor does the Zamorin eat of food that has not first been presented to the god.“Then the Brâhmans lie flat on the ground, but in a secret manner, and they do roll their eyes in a devilish way, and twist their mouths horribly for the space of a quarter of an hour; and then the time to eat is come.And men eat of food which has been cooked by men; but the women cook for themselves.”

Varthema’s account of the manners and habits of Southern India is neither so wholly accurate nor arranged with such lucidity as Hiuen-Tsiang’s record of the region of Ganges and Jumna, written nine centuries before.Nor does Southern India present us with such a high civilization as does the empire of Sîlâditya.But Varthema makes few statements that are not confirmed by other early travellers, and his record bears ample witness to a shrewd, observant eye and honest enquiry.He describes the Brâhmans; the Nairs, or warrior-caste; the artizans and other castes of the Malabar Coast.We learn that no one of the two lowest castes may approach a Brâhman within fifty paces “unless he bid him do so”; wherefore they shout a warning as they pass along, and take private paths through the marshes, for, should they not cry aloud, and should any of the Nairs meet them, they may be killed by him, and no punishment follow thereupon.

The Nairs “eat no flesh without sanction from the Brâhmans; but other castes eat all manner of flesh, saving that of the cow.”The lower castes “eat mice and fish dried in the sun.”All sit on the ground at meals; and the upper castes use the leaf of a tree to scoop up their food from metal bowls; while the lower castes make balls of rice and take it by the hand from a pipkin.All castes and both sexes wear a cotton loin-cloth only.The lowest sort of people suckle their children for three months only, and then feed them on milk night and morning.“And when they have stuffed them therewith, they do not wash them, but cast them into the sand, where they lie until evening.As they are nearly black, one cannot tell whether they be little bears or buffaloes; and they look as if they were fed by the Devil.”

Justice was admirably administered—a characteristic of Hîndustân noticed and praised by Greeks, Romans, Arabians, and all travellers.In fact, life and property were fairly safe throughout all civilized Asia.Creditors, on proof of claim, drew a circle round their debtor with a green bough, and within this he must remain until he pay or perish.Should he leave the circle, his life was forfeit to the Zamorin.Murder was punished by impalement; wilful injury to another by fine.Traders transacted business by secret negotiation under a coverlet, certain signs being made with the fingers.

When a man is sick, he is visited by a dozen men, “dressed like devils,” who are accompanied by players on divers instruments.“These physicians carry fire in their mouths,” and go about on stilts fixed to their hands and feet; and so they go shouting and sounding the music; so that truly they would make a hale man fall to the ground for fear at the sight of these ugly beasts. They force ginger juice on the sick; and, in three days, he is well again—cured in the main, one may surmise, by workings of belief on his expectant imagination. Abracadabra is a useful and time honoured ally to the learned professions. The spirits which preside over the fertility of rice are propitiated in a similar manner by the same men. “When the Nairs die, their bodies are burned with much pomp, and some among them keep the ashes; but common folk are buried within the house or garden.”

Varthema tells us of certain social customs which persist to this day in Southern India.The caste or tribe of Nairs who preponderate there, maintain to-day the institutions of their ancestors before history began.Marriage is acknowledged to be the least stable and most diversified of all human institutions; but the Nairs retain more than a trace of the matriarchate and of the polyandry which was associated with the matriarchate.They count descent through the children of sisters only; and marriage is with them the loosest of ties; it involves no responsibility towards the woman or her child.Again the worship of the snake, and, for obvious reasons, of the cobra in particular, throughout India is a remnant of phallic worship.Let us hear what Varthema has to tell us of a state of society which exhibits a stage in the slow and fluctuating course of moral development from primitive promiscuity to the high moral standard extolled, if not completely attained, by the Christian West.There was a habit which is still regarded in many parts of the world as the seal of amity and the highest possible honour which a man can bestow on a friend.“The Pagans exchange their wives.”Indeed, they bestowed them on a friend with all the ready generosity of Cato the Censor to Hortensius.“And when the King takes to himself a wife, he chooses among the most worthy and honourable of the Brâhmans” him to whom shall be accorded the jus primae noctisThe Brâhman affects unwillingness “and the king must pay him four or five hundred ducats.”Here, almost for certain, we have a vestige of old phallic worship.When the king is journeying, he passes on his matrimonial privileges to a Brâhman.Among the inferior castes, “one woman has five, six, and seven husbands, and even eight....The children go according to the word of the woman.”“The son of one of the sisters of the late king follows him on the throne.”As to serpent-worship, “you must know that, when the King of Calicut has word as to the place where a nest of any of these vile animals is to be found, he has a little house builded over it for water.20 And, if anyone should kill one of these animals or a cow, he would be put to death. They say that these serpents are divine spirits; and that, if they were not spirits, God would not have bestowed on them so great power that, by biting a man but a little, he shall fall headlong and straightway die.” “And when these Pagans go a journeying, it is held for good luck to meet one of these creatures.... There are however, great enchanters: we have seen them grasp deadly serpents.”

The Zamorin “wore so many jewels in his ears and on his hands, arms, legs and feet, that here was a marvel to behold.”His treasury held the immense collection of many previous reigns, stored up for time of need.But that recent scourge of mankind, which spread so rapidly over the world, and which every nation called by the name of a neighbouring nation, had already reached India; this magnificent monarch had “the French disease in the throat.”

When the King eats, Brâhmans, stand around him, at a space of three or four steps distant, bending the back, and holding the hands before the month.When the King speaks, there is silence, and much reverence is paid to his words.

In the warfare between the States of Southern India, an economy of bloodshed was observed which would have done credit to those Italian warriors of whom Machiavelli tells how the condottiere captain was circumspect to save his men, and the foughten field remained almost as bloodless as a chessboard.The Princes went forth to battle with great armies of foot-soldiery and elephants (but no cavalry), armed with swords, lances, bows and arrows, and furnished with shields.But when battle was joined, and the armies were distant from one another as far as two cross-bows’ shots might carry, Brâhmans were ordered by one King to go to his royal foe, and ask that a hundred Nairs should fight on either side.Then the selected Nairs would meet midway between the two armies and fight by established rule—“two strokes to the head and one at the legs; and this though they should fight for three days.And when from four to six on either side are slain, the Brâhmans go straightway into their midst, and make both sides return to their encampments.”Then the kings were wont to employ the Brâhmans again to bear messages, one to another, asking if that were enough, or more were wished for.“The Brâhman says ‘no.’And the enemy says the same.Thus do they do battle together; an hundred set against an hundred.”

Varthema tells us of the habit of betel-chewing and gives us many other details of the life and manners of the people; of their skill as workmen; of their wretched shipping and of their poor navigation.He had the naturalist’s eye, and tells us much of the animals and plants of the district.He describes the crocodile as a “kind of reptile, as big as a boar, but with a greater head; it has four feet, and is four cubits long.It is engendered in certain marshes.The natives say it is without venom; but an evil beast; doing evil to folk by its bite.”

The Persian merchant had avowed that his desire was to travel, and not to trade, for he had enough; but all the same, he was sufficiently eager to find good markets. “My comrade,” whose name is now spelled somewhat differently—Cazazionor becomes Cogiazenor—“being unable to sell his wares for that the trade of Calicut was ruined at the hands of the King of Portugal; for the merchants that were wont to hie thither were not there, nor did they come; we set forth, taking the way of a river, which is the most beautiful I have ever seen, and came to a city called Cacolon, fifty leagues distant.” This “river”-way was by the Backwater of Cochin.

Cacolon, like so many places visited by our traveller is not to be found on a modern map, but was a mart of some importance in its day, “because of pepper of the best which grows in these parts.”Here dwelt a few native Christians “of St.Thomas, some of whom were merchants, believing in Christ.”A little later on Varthema’s journey, he is told of the tomb of the Apostle, “guarded by Christians.”That St.Thomas was the first missionary to India, and that he was martyred there is an ancient tradition.William of Malmesbury tells us in his “Chronicles of the Kings of England” how “Alfred sent many presents over sea to Rome and St.Thomas in India.Sighelm, bishop of Sherborne, sent ambassadors for this purpose, who penetrated successfully into India: a matter of astonishment even in the present time.”The legend concerning St.Thomas is however not earlier than the Fourth Century.Earlier tradition makes him the evangelist of Parthia; and St.Thomas was probably confused with one Thomas, a bishop, who arrived on the Malabar coast in the middle of the Fourth Century.The shrine of the saint is in a suburb of Madras.Indian Christianity was an offshoot of Syrian Gnosticism, and Indian Christians were subject to the authority of the Nestorian Patriarch at Mesopotamia.“These Christians say,” writes Varthema, “that a priest comes from Babylon every three years to baptize them.”

The next place reached by the travellers was Quilon in Travancore, the port of a powerful little kingdom “for ever at war with others.... At that time the king of this city was the friend of the King of Portugal, but we did not think it well to remain there, for he was fighting others.” The contentions of these petty sovereigns with each other gave the Portuguese the opportunity which has always offered itself to the invaders of India, and which they have never been slow to seize.

From Quilon, they sailed to the south, touched at a place where there was a pearl fishery, rounded the “head of India,” and arrived at a port of the Carnatic, which Varthema calls Coromandel.The King of Coromandel was also at war with a neighbour, so Cazazionor and other merchants hired a “sampan,” or flat-bottomed boat, and, “at great peril, by reason of many rocks and shoals,” sailed from the Coromandel coast and reached Ceylon.

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