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 gence of this manuscript from the text used by R. van Eijsinga in his edition of this work.

For the benefit of those who are not familiar with the Arabic character, a transliteration in the Roman character has been made, and the six letters, being of some historic interest, have been translated into English.

The following is a brief description of the mss.

(A) is a letter of authority to trade, given by the king of Acheen to an English captain, perhaps Sir James Lancaster, who was in charge of the first voyage to the Eastern Archipelago undertaken by the English East India Company, and was at Acheen in 1601. This manuscript is in the Bodleian library at Oxford, and is numbered MS. Douce Or. e. 5. It is on a single sheet of paper, and consists of four quarto pages of writing. The first page is in the Arabic language, and is the latter part of the letter of the king of Acheen to Queen Elizabeth, an English translation of which is found in Purchas's YoyagesVoyages [sic], entitled "Hakluytus Posthumus, or Purchas his pilgrimes, London, 1625, fol. 4 vols." The first part of this Arabic letter was probably on another sheet, and may either be lost or possibly is preserved awong the Arabic mss. in the Bodleian library. The second, third and fourth pages of the ms. contain the Malay letter, the text of which is given below. The handwriting is apparently that of a European, and it seems probable that this manuscript is merely a copy of the original documents. The original letter from the king of Acheen to Queen Elizabeth is said to be preserved "in the Archives in London," and it is possible that it might be found if search were made among the early papers of the East India Company. The style of this Malay letter bears some re- semblance to that of the English version of the letter of the king of Acheen to Queen Elizabeth. The heading "Jawi yang di-persembahkan kapitan Inggris itu" would seem to imply that the letter had also been written in some other language, prob. ably Arabic; and it is remarkable that the word Inggris is used in this heading, whereas in the body of the letter the French word "Inglitir" is used, as also in letter B, from which it seems probable that the heading and the body of the letter were written by different persons. Captain Lancaster's interpreter was a Jew, who spoke Arabic, and we may perhaps conjecture that the letter of authority to trade, like the letter to Queen Eliza-