Page:Encyclopædia Britannica, Ninth Edition, v. 10.djvu/191

Rh bn 3atuta. MIDDLE AGEs.] Persia to Ormuz, where he embarked for Tana in Salsette. He then went to Malabar, Sumatra, and Java, and by the ports of China to Cambaluc or Peking, where he remained for three years. Turning westxvard he journeyed by Shensi into Tibet, and was the ﬁrst European to visit Lassa. His homeward journey led him by Cabul and Khorasan to Tabriz, a11d thence to Venice. His companion was an Irish- man named Friar J ames.1 Ibn Batuta, the great Arab traveller, is separated by a wide space of time from his countrymen already mentioned, and he ﬁnds his proper place in a chronological notice after the days of Marco Polo—-for he was not born at Tangier until 1304. He began his wanderings in 1325, his career thus coinciding in time with that of Sir John Mandeville (l322—1356), but the Moor was more trustworthy than the Englishman. Ibn B-atuta went by land from Tangier to Cairo, then visiting Syria, and performing the pilgrimages to Medina and Mecca. After exploring Persia, and again residing for some time at Mecca, he made a voyage down the Red Sea to Yemen, and travelled through that country to Aden, which remarkable place he correctly describes. Thence he visited the African coast, touching at Momboas and Quiloa, and then sailed across to Ormuz and the Persian Gulf. He cressed Arabia from Bahreyn to J iddah, traversed the Red Sea and the desert to Syene, and descended the Nile to Cairo. After this he revisited Syria and Asia Minor, crossed the Black Sea to Caifa, and proceeded to the camp of the khan of Kipchak at the foot of the Caucasus. Ibn B-atuta crossed the desert fro111 Astrakhan to Bokhara, and went over the Hindu Kush to Cabul, reaching the Indus somewhere below Larkhana, in 1333. He gives an interesting account of .Iuham1nad Tughluk, then ruler of Delhi, in whose service the great traveller remained for about eight years. He was sent on an embassy to China in 1342, travelling by land from Delhi to the seaport; whence the ambassadors sailed down the west coast of India to Calicut, and then visited the Maldive Islands and Ceylon. He made a voyage through the Islands to China, and on his return he proceeded from Malabar to Baghdad a11d Damascus, where he got his ﬁrst news from home and heard of his father’s death. Finally he reached Fez, the capital of his native country, in November 1349, after an absence of twenty—four years, and ca1ne to the conclusion that there was no place like home. After a journey into Spain, he set out for Central Africa in 1352, and reached Timbuctoo and the Niger, returning to Fez in 1353. He had travelled ever a length of at least 75,000 English miles. His narra- tive was committed to writing from his dictation, by order of the sulta11 of Fez, and the work was completed in December 1335. Ibn Batuta died at the age of seventy- three, in the year 1377. His whole work was carefully edited in the original, with a translation into French under the auspices of the Asiatic Society of Paris, and published in 1858. Colonel Yule has given us an English version of the portion relating to China. Ibn Batuta was certainly the greatest of Arab travellers, and soon after his death in the kingdom of Fez, the opposite realm of Spain began to send forth explorers to distant lands. GEOGRAPHY 1 79 turned in 1406, and died soon after, but not before he had written a most valuable and interesting narrative of his travels from Constantinople through Persia and Khorasan to the Oxus, and thence by the Iron Gates to Samarkand. Several Italians continued to make important journeys in Itanm Among them was traveller: the East during the 15th century. Nicole Conti, who passed through Persia, sailed along the coast of Malabar, visited Sumatra, Java, and the south of China, returned by the Red Sea, and got home to Venice in 1444, after an absence of twenty-five years. He related his adventures to Poggio Braeciolini, secretary to Pope Eugenius IV. ; and the narrative contains much interesting information. Towards the end of the same century, the Venetian; sent several embassies to Uzun Hassan, the ruler of Persia, and to Shah Ismail, his successor; and the narra- tivcs of the envoys furnish some new geographical informa- tion. The ﬁrst of these was Caterino Zeno, who induced Uzun Hassan to make war on the Turks in 1472 ; and he was followed by J osafat Barbara and Ambrogio Contarini. Another Venetian_ traveller of this period, whose narrative has been preserved, was Giovan Maria Angiolello. He was in the service of the Turks, and was present in their campaign against the Persians. One of the most remarkable of the Italian travellers was Ludovico di Varthema, whose insatiable rlesire to see foreign countries induced him to leave his native land in the year 1502. He went to Egypt and Syria, and for the sake of visiting the holy cities became a Mahometan. After many ex- traordinary adventures he got on board a ship at Aden. Varthema is the first European who gave an account of the interior of Yemen. He afterwards visited and described many places in Persia, India, and the Eastern Archipelago, returning to Europe in a Portuguese ship after an absence of five years. In mentioning Varthema we have anticipated events ; but Mariner’ in the 15th century the time was approaching when the ‘NIP?-S-“v discovery of the Cape of Good Hope was almost indeﬁnitely to widen the scope of geographical enterprise. The great event was preceded by the discovery of the polarity of the magnetic needle, and the consequent construction of the mariner’s compass. This most important discovery appears to have been made in China, and it is uncertain when the compass was ﬁrst used by Western nations. Its introduc- tion has been attributed to F lavio Gioia, a citizen of Amalﬁ, in the kingdom of Naples, about the year 1307. Encour- aged by the possession of this sure guide, by which at all times and in all places he could with certainty steer his course, the navigator gradually abandoned the method of sailing along the shore, and boldly committed his bark to the open sea. Navigation was then destined to make rapid progress. The growing spirit of enterprise, combined with the increasing light of science, prepared the states of Europe for entering upon that great career of discovery, of which the details constitute the materials for the history of modern geography. Portugal took the lead in this new and brilliant path, and foremost in the front rank of the worthies of this little hero-nation stands the ﬁgure of Prince Henry the Navigator. The work of Prince Henry is well deﬁned by his bio- Prince grapher, Mr Major. Until his day the pathways of the Hevﬁy __ human race had been the mountain, the river, and the plain, the M‘ " The peaceful reign of Henry III. of Castile is famous for the attempts of that prince to extend the diplo- matic relations of Spain to the remotest parts of the earth. It was he who ﬁrst gator’ Mariana tells us that he sent embassies to the princes of Christendom and to the Moors. In 1403 the Spanish king sent a knight of Madrid, named Ruy Gonzalez de Clavijo, to the court of the mighty Timur, at Samarkand. He re- 1 Sir John Mandeville copied largely from Odoric, and the substance of his travels to the Indies and Cathay is entirely stolen from the Italian traveller, though ampliﬁed with fables from Pliny and other ancients, as well as from his own imagination. See Colonel Yule in his account of Odoric (C'atIw,_1/, and the Way Thither, i. p. 27). the strait, the lake, and the inland sea. conceived the thought of opening a road through the unex- plored oeean,—a road replete with danger but abundant n promise. Born on March 4, 1394, Prince Henry wai a younger son of King .1050 of Portugal and of Philippa of Lancaster, the grandchild of Edward III. ; so that he was half an Englishman. Prince Henry relinquished the pleasures of the court, and took up his abode on the inhos- pitable promontory of Sagres, at the extreme south-western