Sir Henry Rawlinson has drawn attention to the mention of the ships of Ur in early inscriptions, and the connection of these very ancient vessels with those of Ethiopia. The Babylonian traders at a very remote period voyaged to India and Africa for gold and other articles to use in the arts and to supply the demand of markets. The Euphrates' banks were the ancient quays at which the primitive navigators loaded and unloaded their vessels. They proceeded by the Persian Gulf into the ocean, and there they were guided by landmarks and by the heavenly bodies. These voyages may have continued from the time when Ur was a great city, B.C. 2300, down to the period of the Persian empire, when Babylon began to decline. During all this period, as afterwards, the navigators of the Indian Ocean, whether Babylonian, Arabian, Phoenician, or Egyptian, were trading, aided by the monsoons, along the African and Asiatic coasts, and conveying knowledge from one country to another.

My tour really commenced at La Calle. I proceeded thither by the ordinary land route, and arrived at Bone just in time to catch the Tunis steamer, which left on the 6th April. It was perfectly calm when the vessel left, but after we had been an hour at sea the sirocco, which had been blowing, was suddenly succeeded by a strong north-west gale, and when we arrived off the port, two hours later, we had the greatest difficulty in landing.

If this paper were the first on African questions read before the Royal Asiatic Society, I should have to apologize for trespassing, but as our learned Honorary Secretary, Mr. Robert Oust, noticed,1 there is no African Society, and the Royal Asiatic Society has liberally opened its door to those who may bring information about the mysterious continent. For some time Africa has attracted so much attention that the Society in thus acting has been true to its scientific mission, and its Transactions contain already several most important papers on this interesting quarter of the globe.

A Former number of this Journal (Vol. XIX. Part 2) contained a short account of the three monumental gates of Cairo, the chief, indeed almost the only, remaining memorials of the celebrated Fatimite Khalifate of Egypt. It included a copy of the Cufic inscription sculptured on the frieze of the gate, known by the name of Bab en Nasr, as far as I had then succeeded in reading it.

Muâwiya, the sixth Khalif in succession after Muhammad, was the first of the fourteen Khalifs of the family which presided during a period of nearly a century over the destinies of the Saracenic Empire. His father, Abu-Sufian, was of the tribe of the Kuraish, a tribe to which Muhammad also belonged. Muawiya and his wife became followers of the Prophet on the same day as that on which the father of the former, who had previously commanded the forces of the enemy, announced his adherence to the new religion.

In February last, Captain F. de Laessoë, who is attached as one of the Political Officers with the Afghan Boundary Commission, discovered an important group of caves at Penjdeh, and sent me a plan of them, which is here given ; and with it the following letter, which contains an account of the discovery.

The Alchemist is one of a series of plays lithographed at Tehran, in 1874, by Mirza Ja'afar, a native of Karâjeh-Dâgh. They are his translation from an Azerbaijani-Turkish original, written by Mirza Fath-‘Ali, of Derbend, and first published at Tiflis in 1861. In conjunction with Mr. Haggard, some few years ago, I had occasion to edit, with a translation, the first in order of these plays. Recently, an excellent edition in Persian of three more of Mirza Ja'afar's comedies, and among them “The Alchemist,” has appeared under the auspices of two well-known French scholars.