nd, possibly Madeira,--which they called El Ghanam
from the sheep found there, without shepherd or anyone to tend them. On
landing, they found a spring of running water and some wild figs. They
killed some sheep, but found the flesh so bitter that they could not eat
it, and only took the skins. Sailing south twelve more days, they found
an island with houses and cultivated fields, but as they neared it they
were surrounded, made prisoners, and carried in their own boats to a
city on the sea-shore, to a house where were men of tall stature and
women of great beauty. Here they stayed three days, and on the fourth
came a man, the King's interpreter, who spoke Arabic, and asked them who
they were and what they wanted. They replied they were seeking out the
wonders of the ocean and its limits. At this the King laughed heartily,
and said to the interpreter: "Tell them my father once ordered some of
his slaves to venture out on that sea and after sailing across the
breadth of it for a month, they found themselves deprived of the light
of the sun and returned without having learnt anything." Then the
Wanderers were sent back to their prison till a west wind arose, when
they were blindfolded and put on board a boat, and after three days
reached the mainland of Africa. Here they were put ashore, with their
hands tied, and so left. They were released by the Berbers, and after
their reappearance in Spain, a "street at the foot of the hot bath in
Lisbon," concludes Edrisi, "took the name of Street of the Wanderers."

On the other extremity of the Moslem world, on the south-east coast of
Africa, there was more real progress. By Edrisi's day that important
addition of Arabic travellers and merchants to the geographical
knowledge of the world, by the remarkable trade-ventures of the
Emosaids, had been already made.

It had taken long in the making.

[Illustration: THE WORLD ACCORDING TO EDRISI. (SEE LIST OF MAPS)]

About A.D. 742, ten years after the battle of Tours, the Emosaid family,
descended from Ali, cousin and son-in-law of Mahomet, tried to make
Said, their clan-chieftain, Ali's great-grandson, Caliph at Damascus.
The attempt was foiled, and the whole tribe fled, sailed down the Red
Sea and African coast, and established themselves as traders in the Sea
of India. First of all, Socotra seems to have been their mart and
capital, but before the end of the tenth century they had founded
merchant colonies at Melinda, Mombasa, and