had never seen the “Rison” at all, than was the bishop of Bisignano who recognised it in too many rivers at one and the same time.—BRUUN. CHAPTER XLII. (1.) “the city of Lambe, in a forest called Lambor.”—Pepper was cultivated in Malabar, the country indicated by these two names, long before Schiltberger’s time. Kazvini, who died in 1283, Aboulfeda and Ibn Batouta, all mention its produce, and Giovanni de’ Marignolli, who visited Malabar in 1348, describes the cultivation of pepper in pretty much the same terms as does our author, equally refuting the story that the black colour was owing to smoke employed to drive away serpents. We are informed by this author of the existence of many Christians of St. Thomas in the country, and that there was a Latin church dedicated to St. George in the town of Columbus, doubtlessly the Kollam of the Arabs (Peschel, _Gesch. d. Erdkunde_, 162, note 3), the Kuilon of the Chinese, called Coilum by Marco Polo, Chulam by Benjamin of Tudela, Kaalan by Haythoun, Palombo, Alembo, Polumbrum by Oderic and Mandevile, and Koulem by the natives. These names have nothing in common with Koulouri, where the Russian merchant Nikitin spent five months, but they somewhat assimilate that of Colanum taken in 1503 by the Portuguese, who stated that this town on the coast of Malabar was reputed to be the most ancient and the richest in India (Maffei, _Hist. Ind._, i, 52, xii, 289). Colanum may have been one of the places mentioned by Schiltberger, the other being Calicut, touched at by Vasco de Gama in 1498. The colonisation of the Christian communities seen by the Portuguese at the south-west extremity of the Deccan, dates from the earliest centuries of our era. Neander says (_Allg. Gesch. d. christlichen Relig. und Kirche_, I, i, 114) that the Syriac-Persian community on the coast of Malabar owes its origin to St. Thomas, although its existence, according to Cosmas “Indicopleustes”, cannot be traced earlier than the 6th century. Gregory of Nazianzus asserts (_Orat._, 25) that the Gospel was preached in India by the apostle St. Thomas, who was murdered at a place near Madras called Mailapur, on the Coromandel Coast, the Maabar of Marco Polo, and identical with Mirapolis, where Giovanni de’ Marignolli tells us the apostle was buried. We are scarcely encouraged to look for the forest of “Lambor” in the province of Maabar, because there happened to be indications of Christian churches, rather than on the coast of Melibar or Malabar, where the produce of pepper in ancient times is fully established.—BRUUN.