Seeing the World Centuries
Ago If you enjoy looking through travel books by
such familiar authors as Arthur Former or Eugene Fodor, it will not surprise you
to lean that travel writing has a long and venerable history. Almost from the
earliest annals of recorded time individuals have found ready audiences for
their accounts of journeys to strange and exotic locales. One
of the earliest travel writers, a Greek geographer and historian named Strabo,
lived around the time of Christ. Though Strabo is known to have traveled from
east of the Black Sea west to Italy and as far south as Ethiopia, he also used
details gleaned from other writers to extend and enliven his accounts. His
multivolumed work Geography provides the only surviving account of the
cities, peoples, customs, and geographical peculiarities of the whole known
world of his time. Two other classic travel writers, the
Italian Marco Polo and the Moroccan Ibn Battutah, lived in roughly the same time
period. Marco Polo traveled to China with his father and uncle in about A.D.
1275 and remained there 16 or 17 years, visiting several other countries during
his travels. When Marco returned to Italy he dictated his memoirs, including
stories he had heard from others, to a scribe, with the resulting book The
million being an instant success. Though difficult to
attest to the accuracy of all he says, Marco’s book impelled
Europeans to begin their great voyages of exploration. Ibn
Battutah’s interest in travel began on his required Muslim journey to Mecca in
1325, and during his lifetime he journeyed through all the countries where Islam
held sway. His travel book the Rihlah is a personalized account of
desert journeys, court intrigues, and even the effect of the Black Death in the
various lands he visited. In almost 30 years of traveling it is estimated that
Ibn Battutah covered more than 75,000 miles. In this passage "attest" means to ______.
A. give an examination to
B. draw a map of
C. tell lies to
D. give proof of