caution, vigilance, and excessive terror. Strangers moved about in the midst of innumerable guards, who might, perhaps, be considered as much in the light of spies as defenders. Fear predominated everywhere; the traveller feared his host, and the host the traveller. Religion, honour, morals had no power, or rather no existence. Hence the low pitch beyond which the civilization of China has never been able to soar, and that retrogradation towards barbarism which has long commenced in that country, and is rapidly urging the population towards the miserable condition in which they were plunged before the times of Yaon and Shan, who drew them out of their forests and caverns.
To proceed, however, with the adventures of our traveller. The first great city at which he arrived he denominated El Zaitun, which was the place where the best coloured and flowered silks in the empire were manufactured. It was situated upon a large arm of the sea, and being one of the finest ports in the world, carried on an immense trade, and overflowed with wealth and magnificence. He next proceeded to Sin Kilan, another city on the seashore, beyond which, he was informed, neither Chinese nor Mohammedan ever travelled, the inhabitants of those parts being fierce, inhospitable, and addicted to cannibalism. In a cave without this city was a hermit, or more properly an impostor, who pretended to have arrived at the great age of two hundred years without eating, drinking, or sleeping. Ibn Batūta, who could not, of course, avoid visiting so great and perfect a being, going to his cell, found him to be a thin, beardless, copper-coloured old man, possessing all the external marks of a saint. When the worthy traveller saluted him, instead of returning his salutation, he seized his hand, and smelt it; and then, turning to the interpreter, he said, "This man is just as much attached to this world as we are to the next." Upon further discourse, it appeared that the
