remarkable, and it will be noticed that the spelling of C., which was written in 1612, at the same place, differs considerably from A. and B. Some of the chief points of resemblance between A. and B. are the use of the word Inglitir for England; meli for bli; similarity in the use of tashdid in all the words common to the two letters, namely, sakalian, negri, kapal, kapitan, t‘alok, ia, memeli; and the use of suhbat for sahabat.
(C) is numbered MS. Laud Or. b. 1 (R) in the Bodleian library. It is a letter dated 1024 A. H.=1612 A. D., from the Sultan of Acheen to King James the First of England. It is written on a scroll about three feet long, and is elaborately illuminated. The handwriting is good, being very much su- perior to that of B., but the orthography is in some respects very similar to that of letters A. and B.
(D) is one of a small collection of seven Malay letters, which are preserved in the University library at Leiden, Holland. The trustees of the University library were kind enough to send these letters to England in order that I might have ample leisure to examine them and to copy them carefully. None of these letters had any catalogue number when I examined them. They are all official documents, and appear to date from the same period, about 1670 to 1680 A. D. I have selected two of these letters for reproduction in this paper. The one marked D. is a letter sent by the Captain Laut, a native commander of sea-forces, at the island of Bouton, south-east of Celebes, appointed by the Dutch East India Company, and addressed to the Dutch Governor General at Batavia. Neither this letter nor any of of the other six appear to be of any very special historical interest.
The date of this letter is 1080 A. H.=1670 A. D.
(E) is another of the letters in the Leiden University library. It is an official letter from the King of Jambi, in South- east Sumatra, to the same Governor General to whom the above- mentioned letter was addressed, namely Johan Maetsuijker. This document bore no date, but it is minuted on the back in Dutch, in the handwriting of the period, as having been received on the 30th April, 1669.
(F) is a letter preserved in the British Museum, where it is numbered Rot. Harl. 43. A. 6. This document came to the Museum about 1752 A. D. with the Harleian collection, but it
