for "king," though the bilingual "boss" of Tarkondemos had long ago given us their distinguishing forms. The error had been committed by myself in the early days of Hittite research, and I have been followed in it by subsequent decipherers. But the error was vital. It prevented us from detecting those geographical names, through which alone, without the help of a bilingual, the decipherment of the texts was possible. As soon as I found that the native scribes have always carefully distinguished the two ideographs from one another, all the conditions were changed: I now knew in what group of characters I had to look for the geographical names.

Recent additions, moreover, to the number of texts known to us have also assisted the decipherer in another way. The same suffix is represented in them by more than one character; thus, in the case of the nominative singular, the goat's head (which must therefore have the value of 8) interchanges with the yoke. Thanks, too, to the fact that the hieroglyph of a man's head, surmounted by the priestly tiara, is attached to the figure of the high-priest at Fraklin in Cappadocia, I was able to read the group of phonetic characters accompanying the ideograph in the inscriptions of Carchemish, the native form of the Cappadocian word for "high-priest," having fortunately been given by the Greek writers Strabo and Hesychius. From this it resulted that the rabbit's head denoted the syllable ka.

Now in the inscriptions of Carchemish, and in them only, we find a geographical name, or territorial title, to which alone the determinative of "district" is attached. It consists of four characters, the last three of which are the rabbit's head, the character which the bilingual "boss" had long ago told us has the value of me, the head of a goat, while the first character is one

which is not met with elsewhere and may therefore be assumed to express, not a simple, but a closed syllable. As the last three characters read ka-me(i)s it is obvious that the first must be Kar. We thus get the name of Carchemish just where we should expect to find it. Besides the uninflected Karkames, an adjectival form of the name also occurs, which enables us to fix the values of some more characters.

There are two characters which from the frequency of their occurrence and the fact that they can be inserted or omitted at will after other characters, have long since been recognized to be vowels. For reasons, which it is needless to detail here, I have succeeded in fixing the value of one of them as a and of the other as i. The values of a few other characters have been obtained through their employment as suffixes. One or two Hittite suffixes have been made known to us through the proper names contained in the Egyptian and cuneiform inscriptions; thus, Khatti-na-s is "Hittite," Samal-i-u-s is "Samallian." The Hittite inscription on a bowl found in Babylon, again, has furnished us with the suffixes of the accusative singular, the first person of the verb and probably of the dative case. It begins with an ideograph, which Dr. Leopold Messerschmidt, has shown from a comparison of texts is the demonstrative "this"; then comes the picture of a bowl with a common suffix, denoted by the hieroglyph of a sleeve; then the name of a deity with its suffix; and finally the mason's trowel, which other texts show must have the signification of "mating" and to which a suffix is attached. The whole phrase must have some such meaning as "This bowl I have made for the god X," and the sleeve will denote the suffix of the accusative.

The decipherment of the suffixes has

disclosed an interesting fact. They agree in form and use with those of a language first made known to us by the famous cuneiform tablets of Tel el-Amarna. Among these tablets are two in an unknown language, one of which is addressed to, or by, a certain Tarkhundarans, king of Arzawa. The name of the king is Hittite, and so raises a presumption that the language of the letters is Hittite also. The presumption has been confirmed by the excavations of M. Chantre, at Boghaz Keni. Here he has found other cuneiform tablets in a language closely allied to that of Arzawa. Thanks to the ideographs and stereotyped formulæ that occur in the letters of Arzawa, the meaning of several words and grammatical forms in them can be made out: thus, the termination of -s marks the nominative of the noun and n the accusative. The remarkable agreement of the Hittite and Arzawan suffixes goes far to show that my reading of the Hittite characters is correct.

So, too, does the fact that the right geographical names occur in the inscription in which we should expect to find them. A stela, for instance, has been discovered on the site of the ancient Tyana which begins with the name of a priest-king. This is followed by his territorial title, to which the determinative of "district" is attached. The title, according to the values I have obtained for the characters, reads-a-na-a-na-a-s. Nas is the suffix of a gentilic adjective with the nominative termination; the same suffix is found not only in the name Khattinas, which I have quoted above, but also in the Arzawa letters. Stripping the title, therefore, of its suffix, there remains *-a-na-a. What else can this be except Tu-a-na-a?

What I have said will, I hope, explain my method of decipherment. But it is usually only the proper names

and suffixes that are written phonetically. The roots or stems of the nouns and verbs are more commonly expressed by ideographs. The pictorial nature of Hittite writing, however, not unfrequently gives us a clue to the meaning of the latter. And when once the texts are broken up into their constitutional parts so that we know where the name of an individual or of a country is found, and where we may look for the verb with its subject and object, the translation of the ideographs is comparatively simple.

But it must be understood that the decipherment of the inscriptions is still only in its initial stage. If it took half a century to complete the decipherment of the Persian cuneiform texts we must not expect to decipher the Hittite hieroglyphs in a day. All I can claim to have done is to have made a start and pointed out the road that others may follow.

Meanwhile such Hittite inscriptions as we possess have yielded little that is interesting. The three shorter inscriptions of Hamath record the restoration of a temple. The most perfect of the Carchemish texts is a long list of the titles of the priest-king. Two facts, however, have resulted from the decipherment which, to me at least, were unexpected and surprising. On the one hand the name of "Hittite" is confined to the inscriptions of Syria and the districts eastward of the passes of the Taurus; in the inscriptions of Cilicia and Cappadocia it does not occur. On the other hand, the language that has been revealed to us is, on the grammatical side, extraordinarily like Greek. Thus the priest-king who is commemorated on the rocks of Bulyar Mader calls himself Sandanyas, "of the city of Sandes," the Cilician Herakles. The same perplexing similarity recurs in the case of Lycian grammar: how it is to be explained I do not know. Apart from its gram

matical forms I see nothing in Lycian that is Indo-European; and Hittite seems equally to be an Asianic tongue. Can it be that Greek is really a mixed The Monthly Review.

language, the product of early contact on the part of an Indo-European dialect with the native languages of the coast of Asia Minor?

A. H. Sayce.

CHAPTER XVIII.

Each morning since I had made of her my Mercury I walked to Marine Parade for a chat with Phoebe Hessel, sitting ever at the receipt of custom for her small wares.

"He's had your message, and he'll see 'tis done," she told me the morning following its delivery; "and another he sent in return-that him that was your boatswain bides with them there in his company, and if your honor would speak to him—that is, to the skipper-your honor shall see him if you go to White Hawk Fair."

So this was news. The "arrant failure," mistrusting, no doubt, his reception by me and all others set in authority over him, had thrown in his lot with the lawbreakers to their trade. I regretted it less for the arrant failure himself than for the sake of his unfortunate wife, Mrs. Elphick, who had shown such affectionate anxiety for his welfare when I was at home at Buckhurst.

White Hawk Fair was a business of much more repute in those days than it has become now, when it is merely a rendezvous for a few gipsy caravans and strolling shows. It was then a rowdy affair enough as prize-fighting, pocket-picking and cock-fighting could make it, but it was patronized by all the fashionables from Brighton, led by Royalty itself. It was held on the Sunday between the race days, on that

corner of the Race Down called White Hawk Down where a figure in likeness of a hawk is cut out in the white chalk of the Downs to commemorate a legend that has nothing in the world to do with this history. There

is still to be seen there a circular embankment that local wiseacres will tell you is the remains of a Roman fortification, but which the better informed attribute to the Britons or Celts, who more probably raised it as a defence against the Roman invaders.

The road from Brighton to the Downs in the course of those race days was become a perfect Piccadilly with carriages, chariots, coaches, phaetons, and all the available resources of Brighton at that time, including Phoebe Hessel in a cart with her donkey, going to the races on the Friday and the Saturday, Monday and the Tuesday, and on the Sunday intervening to this White Hawk Fair of which I speak. I found my way thither after an early dinner, for it was then by no means so much the custom as it has lately become to take the heavy meal late in the day. The fair was at its busiest when I reached it, with shows, booths, charlatans, wonders, two-headed calves, a bearded woman, and the rest of the outfit, and what, perhaps, caused the greatest stir and wonderment of all, a troupe of songsters and with banjo and bones, and faces blacked, singing the songs that the niggers sing so well, as those who have

musicians,

been there tell ús, in Virginia and the Carolinas:

'Way down upon de ole plantation, Far, far from home;

'Way down upon de ole plantation, Far from de ole folks at home.

Something like that, and always something of the same savor, with a touch of pathos about it, the songs seemed to be, to the accompaniment of a rattle of the bones and a clash on the tambour and a tinkle of the banjo. They had a few hymns, too, that they sang; and these black-faced fellows, with gaudy striped shirts and pantaloons, were really the great show of the fair this year. It is a style of performance that I hear has become much better known since, but at that time I had never seen anything of the kind, neither, I think, had any of the company; and I have some idea that it was the first of its kind ever given in England. The leader of the singers was a big fellow with an immense round face and a splendid chest voice. When a song was done the tambourine fellow went round with his tambour and took the coins. They made quite a good business of it, as I guessed.

I went up and down through the fair, but look as I might could find no sign of the Skipper of Darby's Cave. Yet I deemed him a man of his word, and doubted not that I should see him before the day was done. In course of the afternoon came His Royal Highness with his special little corps of âmes damnées, my Lord Barrymore and the rest of them. They were mightily taken with the melodies of the black fellows, who had attracted a great concourse by this time, the country folks verily believing, as certainly the children did, that these were true descendants of Ham, black by nature rather than by a burnt cork. The ladies that came with the Prince-Mrs. Fitzherbert, Miss Seymour, Lady Jersey, and

one or two amused by the blacks, and among the pieces that the tambourine-player took back with him from his round were several of gold. When the Royal party went away from their music a good number of the audience moved with them, His Royal Highness always attracting the greatest attention of the people, whatever he did in Brighton. I was standing idly wondering where next to go, when a voice said gently in my ear, "De friend ob Nelson!" I turned, to find, with much surprise, that the speaker was the immense leader of the negro troupe, who had left his choir of blackbirds for the moment. And before I recovered my surprise sufficiently to ask the fellow what he meant a light of comprehension dawned in me as I gazed in his face and saw who it was under the burnt cork-him, and no other, of whom I was in search, the Skipper of Darby's Cave. Had I been of quicker wit I might have guessed him before. Such a masquerading and play-acting was quite in accord with his character, as I learned by my previous knowledge of him when he had figured at our first meeting as the Parson of the Belle Tout Cave.

more-were mightily

"Hush!" he said, before I could speak, seeing with his natural quickness that I had pierced his mask. "I knew no way of coming without a disguise, so I beat my musical fellows to quarters once or twice, practiced them up with some songs of the niggers that I had in an old book of Virginny, and, by King George's Majesty, I think 'tis a better course to steer than the running of a cargo, for 'tis a deal less trouble and not a deal more risk."

"Risk?-what risk?" I said.

"Risk of broken neck-that's what I always risk in coming ashore. But I've a few mates here to help me out," he said, nodding to his musicians, "if trouble should come-that is, so long

as they keep sober. And, by the token, what shall be done with the wretch Elphick? I keep him-he's a good seaman-so long as he cares to keep with us; but if you want him, why, he's no great use, and he can just go with a flea in his ear. It's as you please to say."

"Better send the fellow home," I said, "I've little use for him, but it seems his wife has some. She was fretting for him more than you'd think possible when I was at home."

"Then send him I will," said he, "and you can deal as you please with him once you get him there; and as for your other message, about the Frenchman, that's been done too. And that's a quaint fellow, our Frenchman. Have you found out who he is at all, or what's his business? He's a merry fellow."

"A merry fellow, is he? No, I have discovered little about him."

"Ay, that he is. I had to bestow him into safe keeping down the Kentish border way, and there he has kept the whole ship's company on the grin all the while of his 'prisonment. And seemed to have money to spend in his pocket, too, and not to mind the spending of it."

"Did he, indeed?" I said; "that is not like a French émigré."

"Mate," he replied with emphasis, "you have said the word. It is the word I have said to myself this many a time. It's not like a French émigré. Besides, what would an émigré want robbing you of your despatches? What is this fellow? That is what I want to know."

"And it is what I want to know, too," I said with some little bitterness.

"Man," said he then, "I had a mind to keep him quiet there, for all my promise to you; and more than half a mind to keep him close, and not let him go, till I could get a word again with you. And that I do believe I would

have done, only for this: that I have my doubts whether I could have kept him close much longer, for what with his merry ways and his open hand, that was nothing less than sheer bribery and corruption, there were one or two I would not have trusted long that they would not give him the chance to slip off. You see," he added, in quaint apology that they would not obey his authority in lawlessness, "there's a little of all sorts in our ship's company, and not a few Frenchies among the rest that do not care whether Orleanist, or Corsican, or any other devil, take the helm in France so long as their own pockets be lined. I hope we may never regret it that you did not let me have my way with the fellow when we came up with him on Wych Cross Hill.”"

I shook my head. "Fair fight's all right," I said, "but murder-no; and that would have been stark murder."

"Well, 'tis done now, for better, for worse, like a marriage VOW. Your friend's gone free, scot free, and, please the piper, we'll hear no more of him. I must get back to my piping blackbirds. It's a better trade than I thought it, this banjo-twanging," and the jolly rascal rattled in his pocket a mighty mass of good coin that they had taken.

"Well, cousin!"

The words came to us from behind. We had talked in a little hollow of the downs not fifty yards from the confines of the fair. Unnoticed by us as we talked a man had come upon us, his steps unheard on the springy turf. The smuggler at the words jumped so that I could swear, for all his hardihood, his face under the black cork went white. We turned. It was the Prince who stood there smiling, the rest of his party, at a little distance, watching.

"Well, cousin!" he repeated, as the smuggler stood dumfounded. "I fear I startled you," he continued, as the