SETTLEMENTS OF THE ARABS. 43 



perhaps they mistook the great lake Dibbie for the sea. 

 They mention the island of Ulil, whence were brought great 

 quantities of salt, an article which is in constant demand 

 throughout Soudan. Ulil, though called an island, was 

 probably Walet, ihe great interior market for that mineral ; 

 but all the features of the country around and beyond it 

 seem to have been confusedly blended together by the Mo 

 hammedan authors. 



At the time when the Arabian geographers flourished, 

 the Christian religion was professed, not only in Abyssinia, 

 but even in Nubia, to its northern frontier at Syene. The 

 bigotry and dislike produced by hostile creeds, not only de- 

 prived these writers of the means of information, but led 

 them to view with contempt every thing relating to coun- 

 tries accounted infidel. Their notices, therefore, of the re- 

 gions in the Upper Nile, and along the western shores of 

 the Red Sea, are exceedingly meager. It was otherwise, 

 indeed, with the eastern coast of Africa on the Indian 

 Ocean. The people of Southern Arabia, who were then 

 actively employed in commerce and navigation, had not only 

 explored, but formed establishments at Mombaza, Melinda, 

 Mozambique, and at all the leading points on that coast; 

 which were still found in their possession by the early Por- 

 tuguese navigators. 



For this general view of Central Africa in the twelfth 

 century, we are indebted to Edrisi, Abulfeda, Ibn-al-Vardi, 

 and other writers, who do not however pretend to have 

 visited in person the regions which they describe. Arabic 

 literature has, notwithstanding, been also enriched by the 

 productions of some eminent travellers. Wahab and Abu- 

 zaid, in the ninth century, penetrated into China, and com- 

 municated to the western world the first distinct idea of that 

 remarkable empire and people. Their career, however, was 

 lar surpassed in the fourteenth century by Ibn Batuta, a 

 learned Mohammedan, who traversed the continents of Asia 

 and Africa from the eastern ocean to the banks of the Niger. 

 For a knowledge of his narrative the English public have 

 just been indebted to the learned labours of Professor Lee- 

 of Cambridge, as a member of the Society for Oriental 

 Translation. Unfortunately, he could only procure the work 

 in a very abridged fonn, which renders it more an object of 

 curiosity than as fitted to convey full information of the state 

 of the world at that early pe 'od. 



