by his native sovereign, who, in his opinion, united all the good and great qualities of all the great princes he had seen, and believing, like a true patriot, that his own country of all the regions of the earth was the most beautiful, the old habit of locomotion was still too strong to be subdued; and imagining he should enjoy peculiar pleasure in warring for the true faith, he passed over into Spain, where the Mohammedans were then engaged in vanquishing or eradicating the power of the Christians. The places which here principally commanded his attention were, the Hill of Victory (Gibraltar), and Granada, whose suburbs, surpassing those of Damascus itself, and intersected by the sparkling waters of the Xenil, appeared to him the finest in the whole world.
From Spain Ibn Batūta again passed into Africa, apparently without at all engaging in the war against the Christians, and, after traversing the cultivated districts, entered the great desert of Sahara, through which he proceeded, without meeting with village or habitation for five-and-twenty days, when they arrived at Tagāzā, or Thagari, a place built entirely of rock salt. Proceeding onwards through the desert, in this portion of which there is neither water, bird, nor tree, and where the dazzling burning sand is whirled aloft in vast clouds, and driven along with prodigious rapidity by the winds, they arrived in ten days at the city of Abu Latin, the first inhabited place in the kingdom of Sondan. Here our traveller was so exceedingly disgusted with the character of the negroes, who exhibited unmitigated contempt for all white people, that he at first resolved to return without completing his design; but the travelling passion prevailed, he remained at Abu Latin fifty days, studying the manners and customs of the inhabitants. Contrary to the general rule, he found the women beautiful and the men not jealous; the effect, in all probability, of unbounded corruption of manners.
