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lake abont three miles in circuit which lies near. It is remarkable that the salt here comes without man's toil, for of its own accord, and with no other help than heaven, it forms and congeals, and in Angnst of every year men gather enough to load thirty-four large vessels. In the same town are several Flemish merchants, ami a church served according to the Roman rite by three monks who belong to Jerusalem. There are other churches where there are Greek Caloiers, notably a chapel belonging to the said monks 1 jet ween the town and the shore, where they show a hole said to be the tomb of Lazarus. Eight miles inland is the fanions M. Olympus, now called the Mount of the Cross, because it is said that S. Helen on her return from Jerusalem was forced by stress of weather to land, and having withdrawn to a spot near the mountain she fell asleep with her head on the Cross of our Saviour, which she never left alone. It befell that the Cross was borne away to the top of the mountain, whereon the saint- awoke, and finding the precious relic gone grew mightily sad, knowing not how to recover it ; at last searching everywhere she came to the said mountain, and found that which she loved so much: and jndging by this hap that our Lord woidd be worshipped in that spot she caused a chnrch to be bnilt there, and left in it a piece of the true Cross, which is there preserved with much reverence by the ministers who are Greek priests. Continuing our voyage we pass C. de Greco, behind which lies the city uf Famagusta, between which and the shore is the spot where S. Catherine was beheaded, and the prison of her father. AVe passed hence to Cape S. Andrew, the most salient point of the island: leaving it on our left and crossing the sea we reached Tripoli June 20. DELLA VALLE. Pietro della Valle, a Roman of patrician birth, left Venice for Constantinople on June 8.1014, and returned to Naples February β. 1636. Onr extracts are translated from the third part of the friendly letters in which lie describes his journeys, published in quarto at Home, 1668, pp. 489—468. The author, if not one of the liveliest of the travellers of the seventeenth century, Is auiong the most trustworthy. Gibbon (in. 201) found him the most intelligent spectator of Persia. "He is a gentleman and a scholar, but intolerably vain and prolix." Hallam (L. H. in. 4/i0) did not think him so tedious, and was pleased with the air of romance thrown over his adventures by the Lady Ma'ani, who, alive or dead, followed his wanderings for ten years. She was a Kestoriau of Mardin. born of an Assyrian father and Armenian mother, whom della Valle married in 1616 at Baghdad. She died at Mina, on the Persian Gulf, in 1621, in her twenty-third year. Her body roughly embalmed was carried to Italy, and laid at last to rest in the Church of Ara Cwli at Rome, where lie too was buried in 1652. Tirabosclii (vni. 101) tells us lie was a traveller not exempt from credulity, or from the desire to recount thing* marvellous or impossible, but a scholar, linguist and musician, and above all a man endowed with the old Roman virtues. The minerals of which della Valle was so anxious to procure specimens were known as of Cypriot origin to Dioscorides and Pliny : σύρν is probably sulphate of iron, μίσν, yellow vitriol, μτλαντηρία, oxide of copper, and καΐκια (y?) calamine. On September 2,1625, late in the evening, we descried the island of Cyprus, where we intended to touch and stay some days. On the morning of the 3rd we found we had passed Cape S. Andrea, and were making for the south of the island, for on that side lies the harbour or roadstead of the Salines, where we were to anchor, this being the chief and most frequented port of Cyprus. A little after noon on the 4th we touehed Cyprus for the first EXCËR1TA CYPRIA.

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