of travel, from Ceylon by sea to his home. Both give very full and detailed accounts of all that they saw and heard, and both show far more than the European travelers of the time an appreciation of the beauties of the scenery through which they passed. That travelers then as now, and of other races as well as our own, felt at times their loneliness and yearned to return, is shown by an incident related by Fa Hian. He had then been absent from his home living among strange people in strange lands for nearly fifteen years, when one day in Ceylon he saw in the hands of a merchant a small Chinese fan of white silk which had found its way thither. The sight of this, he says, brought back to him so keenly thoughts of his home that he was able to endure his exile no longer, so soon after set out on his return journey, and after many perils by the way ultimately reached his native place.
The poverty of record which characterizes the pilgrim travel of Europe at this time is even more marked in the case of those who were led by missionary zeal. The two directions in which missionary enterprise seems to have been most marked at this period were south to Abyssinia, and east to China and India. Of the former we have but the slightest record, of the latter practically none at all. That missionary activity was great throughout India, Central Asia, and China, however, we know from various sources. The Nestorian missions which were thus founded between the seventh and the ninth centuries are known to have been abundant, and the missionaries must have been great travelers for they seem to have penetrated throughout much of China and widely along the Indian coasts, but of records they left nothing. Indeed their names are not even known for the most part, although two, Olopan and Kiho, are given in the Chinese annals. Curiously enough, it is at the opposite end of the world that the other missionary travelers of the time are found, namely in Ireland. Here there are a few accounts of explorations northward to the Faroes and Iceland during the eighth century, but little information of value was recorded.
MOHAMMEDAN PROPAGANDA
Another and very important group of travelers during this period were the Arabs. With the rise of Mohammedanism in the seventh
