tent with it. The children were naked, and happy and healthful apparently, as children ought to be.

"Tzaffa!" called out a fat pursy Turk, who was diligently fumigating in the corner of the yard; a graceful young girl of fourteen or sixteen years of age bounded to her feet as she heard the call, and going towards her lord, salaamed respectfully as she approached him. She was elegantly formed-her figure might have served as a model for the sculptor, so firm, graceful, and undulating in its outlinesbut her face was Nubian, and contrasted disagreeably with the fine form. Receiving some order from her fat master, she went into an adjoining room and brought him something he required. He took it from her hand without a word. Making a low obeisance, and returning to the group she had left, she sat down again, and commenced talking immediately.

We knew nothing of Tzaffa's history or of her character, but she interested us much, and was frequently afterwards, when we were far away from Cairo, a theme of conversation. Often did we speculate what her fate had been, and what the feelings with which she endured.

it. Tzaffa! Tzaffa! the name alone was sufficient to interest us.

We left the slave-market of Cairo with the conviction that thousands of our own countrymen and countrywomen-that tens of thousands of the natives of India-were more, far more, to be pitied, than the Nubian slaves there exposed for sale.

'PAGES OF CEYLONESE HISTORY.

It would be well for Ceylon and its inhabitants were its history better known to Englishmen generally, and were its affairs brought more prominently before the British public. No one who has visited the island, can help feeling an extraordinary interest in all that appertains to it. Unfortunately for its people, however, its history is not so intimately connected with any portion of that of Greece or Rome as to render the island an object of interest to the classical student. It was but faintly known to the Greek and Latin geographers as Taprobane-they had some indistinct idea that some such island, rich in pearls, cinnamon, and elephants, existed somewhere in the recesses of the Indian Ocean and that goods came from it that had been con

veyed from a far more distant shore, that of China.

Few untravelled Europeans, indeed, realize to themselves the size of Ceylon. They probably look upon it as a sort of counterpart of the Isle of Wight, or Malta, and are possibly incredulous when informed that it is very nearly of the same size as Ireland—Ceylon containing 24,600 square miles, and Ireland about 28,800. They have their doubts, too, when told that it once contained at least five millions of inhabitants, and can still exhibit ruins of cities, once of vast extent, and of buildings that almost rival the pyramids of Egypt in size and age.

But that which more than anything else evidences the greatness of Ceylon in by-gone times, is the fact that it has a continuous history of itself, which extends from five hundred years before Christ up to the period of the Portuguese invasion in 1505 A.D.-a history proving that the people of Ceylon were once a powerful and refined nation, and that too, long ere Julius Cæsar had invaded Britain, or the Celtic inhabitants of these islands had learned the rudiments of civilization. South

ern India and the Eastern Peninsula were successively the scenes of the warlike exploits of the Ceylonese in their days of greatnesstheir conquests, it is true, were but transitory, still, however, the gaudy pagodas of Burmah and Siam bear testimony to the truth of Singhalese history, for to those countries Ceylon gave its own religion, Budhism; and they have ever since retained it. In the hope that a perusal of some of the facts of this history may induce the reader to seek fuller and more explicit information on the subject elsewhere, I here present him with an epitome, originally compiled, after considerable research, for an Indian periodical. It will be considered by many dry reading, I doubt not-hence its position at the end of the second volume.

The Chinese, Burmese, and the natives of India are all claimants for the honour of having originally peopled Ceylon. It appears most probable, that, when the neighbouring shores of the continent were occupied, the narrow island-studded strait between would be passed, and the rich plains of northern Ceylon be provided with inhabitants. Fable identifies it with the scene of the contests between Rama