have generally assembled in the mosque. Then the Imám proceeds with the exercises, consisting usually of certain short chapters from the Koran and a few prayers, interspersed with beautiful chanting of the Moslem watch-word, La ilaha ill' Allahu, Mohammadu rasoolu 'llahi-There is no god, etc. We may remark, by the way, that their tunes are not set in the minor key, as is almost always the case among the Arabs. Their natures are more joyful. They exult in the diatonic scale of life, and leave their oriental co-religionists to wail in the sad and mournful chromatics of the desert.

The Mandingoes are an exceedingly polite and hospitable people. The restraints of their religion regulate their manners and control their behavior. Both in speech and demeanor they appear always solicitous to be en regle-anxious to maintain the strictest propriety-and they succeed in conforming to the natural laws of etiquette, of which they seem to have an instinctive and agreeable appreciation. In their salutations they always strive to exceed each other in good wishes. The salutation, Salaam aleikum-"Peace be with you"-common in oriental Mohammedan countries, is used by them very sparingly, and, as a general thing, only on leaving the mosque after early morning worship. The reply is, Aleikum-e-Salaam, wa rahmatullahi wa barakatuhu-"With you be peace, and the mercy of God and his blessing." If Salaam aleikum is addressed to them by a Kafir or pagan they seldom reply; if by a Christian, the reply is, Salaam ala man taba el-huda-" Peace to him who follows the right way."

Those who speak Arabic speak the Koranic or book Arabic, preserving the final vowels of the classical language-a practice which, in the hurry and exigencies of business life, has been long discontinued in countries where the language is vernacular; so that in Egypt and Syria the current speech is very defective, and clipped and corrupted. Mr. Palgrave informs us, however, that in North-east Arabia the "grammatical dialect" is used in ordinary conversation. "The smallest and raggedest child that toddles about the street lisps in the correctest book Arabic that ever De Sacy studied or Sibaweeyah professed."* So among the Arabic scholars whom one meets in the interior of Liberia. In proper names we hear Ibraheema, Aleeu, Sulei*Palgrave's Arabia, vol. i, p. 311.

mana, Abdullahi, Dauda, etc.; in worship Allahu, Akbaru, Lailaha, ill' Allahu, etc.; and it is difficult for the mere tyro in Arabic pronunciation either to understand or make himself understood unless he constantly bear in mind the final vowels in nouns, verbs, and adjectives. A recent number of the "Saturday Review,"* in a notice of General Daumas's new work on "Arabic Life and Mussulman Society," remarks, "One comfort for the learner will be that the oft-pressed distinction between what is termed the learned and the vulgar (Arabic) tongue is a mere fiction of European growth. It has no foundation in native usage." We fear that the theoretical comfort which the soothing reviewer attempts to administer to the learner of Arabic will be found of no practical avail when applied to the intercourse of daily life in Syria and Egypt. Only such learned natives as Mr. Bistany of Beyroot and Dr. Meshakah of Damascus speak the language so as to be understood by one versed only in Koranic inflections. And even they generally avoid that style as stilted, pedantic, and absurd. Says a high authority:†

Les populations Arabes, en general, etant fort ignorantes, par leur misère d'abord, et ensuite par l'extreme difficulté de l'etude et de l'application de leur idiome, le langage usuel des diverses regions est soumis à bien des varietés, soit de prononciation, soit de denomination des ideés et des choses.

Among the Moslems of West Africa there are some peculiarities in the sounds of the letters. The fourth letter of the alphabet is generally pronounced like 8; the seventh like the simple k; the ninth like j in jug; seen and sheen have both the sound of 8. The fifteenth letter is sounded like 7; the nineteenth, whose guttural sound is so difficult to Western organs, is sounded like k; the twenty-first like g hard.

The introduction of Islam into Central and West Africa has been the most important if not the sole preservative against the desolations of the slave-trade. Mohammedanism furnished a protection to the tribes who embraced it by effectually binding them together in one strong religious fraternity, and enabling them by their united effort to baffle the attempts of

*March 26, 1870.

M. Bresnier, Professor of Arabic in the Normal College of Algiers, in his "Cours Pratique et Theorique de Langue Arabe."

powerful pagan slave hunters. Enjoying this comparative immunity from sudden hostile incursions, industry was stimulated among them; industry diminished their poverty, and as they increased in worldly substance, they also increased in desire for knowledge. Gross superstition gradually disappeared from among them. Receiving a degree of culture from the study of the Arabic language, they acquired loftier views, wider tastes, and those energetic habits which so pleasingly distinguish them from their pagan neighbors.

Large towns and cities have grown up under Mohammedan energy and industry. Dr. Barth was surprised to find such towns or cities as Kanó and Sokoto in the center of Africa-to discover the focus of a complex and widely ramified commerce, and a busy hive of manufacturing industry, in a region which most people had believed to be a desert. And there are towns and cities nearly as important farther west, to which Barth did not penetrate, affording still scope to extend the horizon of European knowledge and the limits of commercial enterprise. Mr. Benjamin Anderson, the enterprising Liberian traveler, who has recently visited Misodu, the capital of the Western Mandingoes, about two hundred miles east of Monrovia, describes that city as the center of a considerable commerce, reaching as far north as Senegal and east as far as Sokoto.

The African Moslems are also great travelers. They seem to travel through the country with greater freedom and safety than any other people, on account, probably, of their superior intelligence and greater usefulness. They are continually crossing the continent to Egypt, Arabia, and Syria. We met a few weeks ago at Toto-coreh, a town about ten miles east of Boporo, a lad who informed us that he was born at Mecca while his parents were in that city on pilgrimage. We gave him a copy of the New Testament in Arabic, which he read with unimpeded fluency, and with the Oriental accent and pronunciation. The general diffusion of the Arabic language* in this country *The natives love and revere the language. All documents of a serious character must be written in that language. Bishop Crowther of the Niger, in a letter dated October 30, 1869, tells us of his visit to King Masaba, a distinguished Mohammedan sovereign, with whom he entered into a written agreement with reference to the establishment of a Christian mission in his capital. "I drew up his promise," says the Bishop, "in English, which he handed over to his Maalims to be translated into Arabic."-Christian Observer, January, 1870.

through Mohammedan influence must be regarded as a preparatory circumstance of vast importance for the introduction of the Gospel. It may be "the plan of Providence that these many barbarous nations of Africa are to be consolidated under one aggressive empire of ideas and faith, to prepare the way for evangelization through the medium of one copious, cultivated, expressive tongue, in the place of leaving to the Church the difficult task of translating and preaching in many barbarous languages, incapable of expressing the finer forms of thought.' Already some of the vernaculars have been enriched by expressions from the Arabic for the embodiment of the higher processes of thought. They have received terms regarding the religion of the one God, and respecting a certain state of civilization, such as marrying, reading, writing, and the objects having relation thereto, sections of time, and phrases of salutation and of good breeding; then the terms relating to dress, instruments, and the art of warfare, as well as architecture, commerce, etc.t

Mohammedanism in this part of the world could easily be displaced by Christian influence if Christian organizations would enter with vigor into this field. Rev. G. W. Gibson, Rector of Trinity Church, Monrovia, in a letter published in the "Spirit of Missions" for April, 1869, says:

Whatever may have been the influence of Mohammedanism on races in other parts of the world, I think here, upon the African, results will prove it to be merely preparatory to a Christian civilization. In this country, and almost immediately in our vicinity, it has recovered millions from paganism, without, I think, having such a grasp upon the minds of the masses as to lead them obstinately to cling to it in preference to Christianity, with its superior advantages. The same feelings which led them to abandon their former religion for the Moslem will, no doubt, lead them still further, and induce them to embrace ours when properly presented. I express this opinion the more readily from several interviews I have had lately with prominent parties connected with some of these tribes.

We are persuaded that with the book knowledge they already possess, and their love of letters, many of them would become ready converts of a religion which brings with it the recom

* Prof. Post, of Syrian Prot. College, Beyroot.

See Barth's "Collection of Central African Vocabularies," Part I, p. 29.

mendation of a higher culture and a nobler civilization. And, once brought within the pale of Christianity, these Mohammedans would be a most effective agency for the propagation of the Gospel in remote regions, hitherto impervious to European zeal and enterprise, and the work of African regeneration would proceed with uninterrupted course and unexampled rapidity.

ART. V.-THE PROBLEM OF BABEL.

It is proposed in the present paper to inquire into the probable significance of the recorded transaction of Babel. No solution which shall claim to be final and complete is attempted. That would be possible only to a careful observer, himself eye-witness and partaker of the miracle. He who ages afterward institutes his inquiry can expect to reach only that which seems reasonable, and on which he may rest with at least temporary satisfaction. After another period of research a stronger than he may take his solution from him and trample it, or he may himself repudiate it. Such is the history of opinion in every branch of investigation.

Our inquiry will make needful some statement of the nature and results of linguistic research in modern times. Here is found subject-matter of almost limitless extent. Great as has been the industry of the last half century in subduing the various other branches of science, in philology it has been not inferior. Languages long familiar to the learned world have been subjected to critical examination and analysis; new ones bave been found, rich in capacity and in literary remains, which have thrown new light upon the nature and difficulties of others previously known, and every corner of the earth has been searched that the speech of the rudest tribe might be brought to its place in that just arrangement to which science seeks to bring all its materials. Any adequate survey of the vast results of modern philological labor is far beyond the decent limits of this paper. It is possible to present only a path of thought in a prairie of observation.

We have a brief, positive, unscientific document, probably