custom, waxed loquacious. He pointed to the bodies of the dead canaries and the gold-fishes. "See what your Monkey has done in the night," he said.

The Boy looked soberly at the dead birds and the fishes, then at the man.

Then the cousin, who was cleaning the cage of one of the dead canaries, piped up in a slender, shrill voice, not unlike a bird's: "Yes, only see! And if I hadn't woke just as I did, he would have killed the whole shopful. Better leave monkeys in their woods where they belong."

The Boy looked from one to the other, but he said nothing. Then he went as usual to the Monkey's den, and the Monkey came to the side of it, and the two mouthed at each other silently with perfect understanding. When the Boy was leaving the shop the Bird - Fancier stopped him. He had been having a whispered consultation with his wife.

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See here," he said; "if you want that Monkey you can have him." The Boy turned pale and stared at him. "I will put him in an old parrot - cage," said the Bird-Fancier, " and you can stop and get him this noon."

"For nothing?" gasped the Boy. "Yes, for nothing," replied the BirdFancier. "I am tired of keeping him. Monkeys ain't very saleable."

"For nothing?" repeated the Boy. "Yes, you needn't pay a cent," said the Bird-Fancier, looking at him curiously.

Such an expression of rapture came

went out, and to school, and for the first time in months learned his lessons with no effort, and seemed to see truths clearly and not through a fog. He had a great happiness to live up to, and for some minds happiness is the only dispeller of fogs, and the Boy's was of that sort.

After school he ran all the way home to make sure that the Monkey would be welcome, and that his mother would not refuse him shelter, then he went without his dinner to fetch him.

When the Boy arrived at the Bird-Fancier's the Monkey was all ready to depart, ensconced in the old parrot-cage. The Boy went out of the store, dragged to one side with the weight of his precious burden, and for the first time in his life the ecstasy of possession was upon him. He had never fairly known that he was alive until he had come into the ownership of this tiny life of love.

The Bird-Fancier watched him going down the street, and turned to his wife, who was stroking the Angora cat, and the cousin, who was feeding a canary which had just arrived. The Boy, going down the street, had his face bent over the Monkey, and the two were mouthing at each other. "I am right, you may depend upon it," he said. "There goes one monkey carrying another."

the days of the Alexandrian school people have been poring over this interesting question, where to look for it.

Of course from a historical point of view we have here one of the greatest mysteries of the development of mankind, for the solution of the riddle will throw a bright light on the ancient mercantile relations between Asia Minor and other parts of the world. How many different hypotheses have been put forward I will not enter into in detail. Let me only remark that Ophir has been placed in Armenia, in Phrygia, in Spain, in Peru, in the Malayan Peninsula, in Ceylon, and in Su

matra.

Christopher Columbus was firmly convinced that he had found Ophir in the West Indies, and reporting to the King of Spain on his third voyage, he writes:

"The mountain Soporo (the name for Ophir, which in the Septuaginta is written Sophora), which it took King Solomon's ships three years to reach, on the island of Haiti, has now come with all its treasures into the possession of their Spanish majesties."

by which name the Phoenicians called the native inhabitants of Carthago. This purely philological derivation led me to believe at once that we must look for Ophir, not in Arabia and India, but in some part of Africa. While discussing this matter with my scientific friends, I happened one day, when strolling about the library in an ancient castle on the

The best-based theories are three, of which the one places Ophir in Arabia, another in India, and the third one in South Africa.

I, personally, since I have been studying this problem, have always been of opinion that we have in the Semitic word "Ophir" or "Afer" the root of our present name of the continent of Africa, Africa being the Latin adjective of "Afer,"

Weser River near

Bremen, to strike

upon an old historical atlas, in which I found a most interesting map of Central and South Africa. On this map the Congo River, which was explored later on by Mr. Stanley, and and the middle and lower parts of the Zambesi River were set forth with remarkable accuracy, and the chart further contained a careful sketch of the old Portuguese goldmines and ancient gold workings in these districts.

Το this map, which I think was a work of the celebrated French geographer Delisle, and was published in the year 1705, was attached a description of the Zambesi district, especially of the Portuguese goldmarkets there. this description I

In

read the following passage, which seemed to me extremely remarkable, viz.:

Fifty lieues (one lieue is about two and one-third miles) from Teté, ten lieues from Bocuto, and half a day's journey from the River Mansoro, is the fort of Massapa, which used to be the principal gold-market. It is still to-day the residence of a Portuguese captain, whom they call the Captain of the Gates, because from there onward in the country one finds the gold mines. The Do

minicans have there a church of Notre Dame du Rosaire.

Near this place is the great mountain of Fura, very rich in gold, and there are people who say that this name "Fura" is a corruption of the name Ophir. One sees to-day still in this mountain (dans cette mon

tagne) walls of cyclopean stones (pierres de taille) of the height of a man, fixed together with an admirable art, without mortar and without being worked with a pick. It was apparently within these walls that the Jews of the navy of Solomon staid. Since that time the Moors have been masters of this ("gold") commerce for several centuries. In this mountain the river of Dambarari goes to the north. These two markets were destroyed by the general Gamira, a Caffre, who rose in the month of November, 1693, with this difference that the inhabitants of Longoe, Portuguese as well as Canarins, had time to save themselves and escaped, but

those of Dambarari, who wished to show themselves more courageous, all perished while defending themselves. So was it that all the gold-markets which the Portuguese had established in the Mocranga, during such a long space of years, were destroyed simultaneously, to avenge the injuries which they had inflicted on the Emperor of Monomotapa, who had always received them as his children, or, as the Portuguese explain it themselves, because their wives showed a little too much friendship to the strangers.

Now this was a very interesting piece of information indeed. It gave a new stimulus to my studies on the subject. I took Bent's well-known book on The Ruined Cities of Mashonaland in my hand, and was struck by the following passage:

Couto, the Portuguese writer, speaks of the gold-mines here in his quaint legendary style: "The richest mines of all are those of Massapa, from which the Queen of Sheba took the greater part of the gold which she went to offer to the Temple of Solomon, and it is Ophir, for the Kaffirs call it Fur, and the Moors Afur.

Having studied the old Portuguese reports on the matter, and compared the maps of these districts, from all this combined information I became more and more convinced that we were in fact to look for the old Ophir in the neighborhood of the Zambesi River.

I furthermore succeeded soon after, on the basis of geographical theories, in locating the Fura that is mentioned in these reports.

From the accompanying map I could