representing the Pi-ho river) I account for from the immense concourse of people constantly assembled on that river (connected as it is with the Whang-ho, or Yellow-river, by the famous canal), so that it should appear in a manner quite covered, and that the people should be seen rather than the water (duos and donew).

But almost all the favourite pursuits and characteristic qualities of this most extraordinary people are summarily comprised in the following speech of the emperor Aλoos himself, 8 Od.

349,

Αιτι ημιν δαις τε φίλη κιθαρις τε χοροι τε Είματα τ' εξημοίβα λοετρα σε θερμά και είναι -οσσον περιγινομεθ' αλλων

Ναυτιλία και ποσι και ορχήσει και αποδε

their banquetings, and the music accompanying them; their dancing (or perhaps their choral dramas,) under the words κιθαριστε, χοροιτε; their love of women, (or perhaps their practice of polygamy, under the plural suvg); their constant habit of navigating their rivers and coasts; their

agility in bodily exercises, and particularly with their feet; and, finally, their habitual practice of drinking tea, (for that beverage do I understand to be alluded to by λοετρατε θερμα,) are all successively introduced. There are many other allusions to the practice of drinking tea, in the parts of Homer that treat of the Phæacians, or Chinese: one of which will be particularly noticed presently; and as a collateral proof that it was a practice common in ancient times, it is for the reader to determine whether the plant full of leaves held in the hands of fig. 1, pl. 3, as copied from Sonnini's Travels in Egypt, may not have been intended to represent the tea plant. From the slight remembrance I have of it, from seeing it casually in green houses, it seems to me to resemble that plant in shape; and besides, that it may be inferred from the peacock's heads and peacock's feathers, with which the head-dress of the bearer of it is surmounted, that it is a Chinese plant, as the tea is known to be, (for the peacock's feather is in particular request with the Chinese, and is worn as a high mark of distinc

tion by their superior orders ;) the cross position. of the arms of the figure, by affecting the shape of the letter T, seems intended to recal the recollection of the very name of the plant; and the position of the shoots in respect of the stalk, as well as that of the bird (as Sonnini calls it, though, as engraved for him, and copied in pl. 3, it has but little likeness to a bird,) which is perched upon one of the shoots, would seem to be intended to affect the shape of the letter T likewise, and with the same view.

But though Homer has devoted several entire books of the Odyssey to the Chinese, it is not necessary to resort to that poem to prove that he was perfectly well acquainted with that people : for all their leading characteristics are marked with a stroke of the pen, as it were, in the Iliad itself. It may be remembered, that when Thetis is in want of a new suit of armour for her son Achilles, she applies to HOTOS, Vulcan, to make it for her. Now this god Halotos, (for it is here necessary to give an explanation of another of the ancient deities,) I have no doubt, was