adventures, and draw the greatest profit from the pearl, after it shall
have been extracted from its shell!' To Ibn Djozay, therefore, we are
indebted for the abundant poetic quotations interspersed throughout the
work--the ornaments which hang, sometimes with curious effect, on the
plain, straight-forward story which Ibn Batuta tells us. Making the
usual allowance for Oriental exaggeration, and the occasional confusion
which must occur in a memory so overcharged, we do not hesitate to
pronounce the work worthy of all credit. Burkhardt, Seetzen, and Carl
Ritter have expressed their entire confidence in the fidelity of the
narrative.

This interesting work was known to European scholars, until quite
recently, in a fragmentary condition, frequently disfigured by errors of
transcription. Since the French occupation of Algiers, however, two or
three perfect copies have been discovered, one of which, now in the
Imperial Library at Paris, bears the autograph of Ibn Djozay. The
publications of the _Société Asiatique_ furnish us with the narrative,
carefully collated, and differing but slightly, in all probability, from
the original text. Let us now run over it, freely translating for the
reader as we go. The introduction, which is evidently from the elegant
hand of the amanuensis, is so characteristic that we must extract a few
Title and all, it opens as follows:

A PRESENT MADE TO OBSERVERS,
TREATING OF THE
CURIOSITIES OFFERED BY THE CITIES AND
OTHER WONDERS ENCOUNTERED IN
TRAVEL.

'In the name of God, the Clement, the Merciful: Behold what says the