IT is a curious fact that, while we are fairly well acquainted with the geography of the ancient world, and still better with that of modern times, dating from the Reformation, a great blank occurs in our knowledge about the period of the Middle Ages. The downfall of the Roman Empire and the occupation of Western Europe by barbarous nations, ignorant of even the elements of civilised life, extinguished all scientific research. Many centuries elapsed before geography, which had to share the fate of the other sciences, was revived. The state of Europe at the time of the Crusades can only be dimly inferred from the romantic narratives and chronicles of the period that deal with the valiant deeds of the doughty knights. Travellers for business were probably but few in those days; travellers for pleasure still fewer, if they existed at all; and such as there were were in all probability illiterate, and hence unable to comply with Bacon's primary demand from a traveller, that he should keep a diary and register his observations.

The most notable of all mediæval travellers is, of course, Marco Polo. We should certainly have been great losers had he not recorded his adventures at the court of Kublai Khan, and we have at length passed the ignorant stage that sneers at or rejects all that seems strange and unwonted as mere fiction. We have learnt to sift the valuable grain from the chaff without arrogantly tossing

away the whole as useless. Those were days when accurate knowledge was not so easily acquired, when verbal information had to be largely relied on, and the result was a strange commingling of fiction and fact.

Besides Marco Polo, the name of Abdallatif is familiar as an Egyptian traveller to whom we owe the narrative of the failure that occurred in the Nile inundations towards the end of the twelfth century, when for a time cannibalism was practised in the Delta. Then there was Rabbi Pethachia, of Ratisbon, who journeyed in the middle of that century. Pethachia was probably a rich man, impelled to travel by a strong desire to visit his distant brethren and the graves of the Hebrew saints, an object quite in accordance with the spirit of the day. His narrative, which has come down to us much mutilated and abridged, is, for the period, copious in description, but his facts are not always accurate. To Edrisi we owe the first real geographical treatise, written for Roger II., King of Sicily, and which for three centuries formed the basis of all geographical knowledge. We have only one more name to add, that of Rabbi Benjamin of Tudela, and the scanty record of the periodis substantially closed. Perhaps of all these travellers the name of this Jew is the least familiar-certainly not as familiar as that of Marco Polo, with whose narrative his Itinerary presents some striking

similarities, though he lived before him, and was consequently the first European who penetrated so far eastward.

It is presumed by scholars that this Itinerary of Rabbi Benjamin shared the fate of Marco Polo's travels in being abridged from the original journal by copyists and translators, and since no complete and genuine MS. has as yet been discovered, we are obliged to content ourselves with those that exist, fragmentary and imperfect though they are. The work, which was well known to the learned in the thirteenth, fourteenth, and fifteenth centuries, and had gained credit among Jews and Christians, was never printed until the sixteenth century, when an edition appeared at Constantinople, printed -as it had been written in the Rabbinic character. This edition is extremely rare; the Bodleian possesses an incomplete copy. In the seventeenth century the work was translated into Latin, and since then into French, English, Dutch and German. Probably few general readers have taken the trouble to peruse the quaint, brief utterances of this ancient Spanish Jew; and yet his narrative, for all the narrow space in which its information is compressed, by no means lacks interest, and will, we hope, be found to repay analysis.

The first object of interest to us is naturally the writer himself. Little is known about him, and only by inference from the events named by him can we fix the exact date of his visit to various cities. He was a Spaniard, and lived before the Jews were persecuted and oppressed in the name of charity and love; indeed, in his day the Jews held a respected position in Christian Spain. They filled posts of honour and were permitted to bear arms and rank as knights.

The Jewish congregation of Tudela, a little town on the Ebro, had even actively asserted their equality with the Christians and Mahommedans of the place, and possessed a military tower for their proper security. Rabbi Benjamin was a native of this town, and his birth must certainly have occurred in the early part of the twelfth century. The object of his travels is never stated by him, but it was probably of a mercantile character. His descriptions are such as a sober merchant, voyaging for his business, but observing besides, would be likely to give. This view is further confirmed by the accuracy with which he notices the state of trade in the various places he visits. Besides this, it is very evident that Rabbi Benjamin endeavoured to become acquainted with the state of his brethren in the countries through which he passed. He sought out all the Jewish synagogues, and has recorded the names of the various rabbis, the principal Jewish residents, and the number of their congregations. Hence his narrative contains the fullest account extant of the state of the Jews in the

twelfth century. He is accused, on insufficient grounds, of having overstated these numbers for the purpose of glorifying his nation, and the fidelity of his work has been impugned as having been written only for the purpose of celebrating his own people. That the writer was a pious Hebrew is very obvious, and a fact he never even attempts or seeks to disguise; but why this fact should invalidate the veracity of a very plain, straightforward, and unimaginative Jewish merchant is not so obvious. It is highly probable that with his commercial objects he combined a curiosity similar to that of the Chinese traveller FaHian, who early in the seventh