Letters, however, were written to the King by all sorts of people, and upon all sorts of business. Thus we find Assur-bani, the captain of a river-barge, writing about the conveyance of some of those figures of colossal bulls which adorned the entrance to the palace of Sennacherib. The letter is short and to the point: “To the king my lord, thy servant Assur-bani: Salutation to the king my lord. Assur-mukin has ordered me to transport in boats the colossal bulls and cherubim of stone. The boats are not strong enough, and are not ready. But if a present be kindly made to us, we will see that they _are_ got ready and ascend the river.” The unblushing way in which _bakshish_ is here demanded shows that in this respect, at all events, the East has changed but little. Of quite a different character is a letter about some wine that was sent to the royal cellars. The writer says in it: “As for the wine about which the king my lord has written to me, there are two homers of it for keeping, as well as plenty of the best oil.” Later on, in the same letter, reference is made to a _targu-manu,_ or “dragoman,” who was sent along with the wine, which probably came from the Armenian highlands. It may be noted that in another letter mention is made of a “master of languages,” who was employed in deciphering the despatches from Ararat. A letter from the cellarers of the palace has been translated as follows by Dr. Johnston: “To the king our lord, thy servants … Bel-iqisa and Babi-lû: Salutation to the king our lord! May Assur, … Bel, and Nebo grant long life and everlasting years to the king our lord! Let the king our lord know that the wine received during the month Tebet has been bottled, but that there is no room for it, so we must make (new) cellars for the king our lord. Let the king our lord give orders that a (place for) the cellars be shown to us, and we shall be relieved from our embarrassment (?). The wine that has come for the king our lord is very considerable. Where shall we put it?”