492 VARIOUS LETTERS The African traveller should be precise in his attention to the sound of these words, otherwise he will be quite unintelligible to the Africans, and to the Muhamedans.

Richardson, in his Arabic Grammar, is certainly incorrect, when he says, the letter p gi-ain should be pronounced gh. No one acquainted practically/ with the Arabic language, could possibly be of this opinion ; gh having no more resemblance to the sound ofthe letter p grain, than g has to h : and every traveller going to Africa with this erroneous opinion, will, undoubtedly, be unintelligible to the Africans.

Finally, the Arabic document, if it maybe permitted to call it Arabic, facing page 128 ofthis interesting work of Mr. Bowdich, is a most miserable composition of Lingua franca, or corrupt Spanish, of unintelligible jargon, consisting of many words quite unintelligible to the Africans, whether Negroes or Moors, or others. The language of this document, although it has some Arabic words in it, is worse, if possible, than the scrawl in which it is written ; neither is it a correct translation of the English which precedes it. But purporting to be a letter issued from the accredited servants of the King of the English, it is certainly a disgrace to the country from whence it issues, and a rare specimen of our knowledge of the Arabic languaage.

James Grey Jackson.