address, and not without risk, in visiting various parts of the auriferous region; and his explorations were followed up by David, Levens, and others. Raffenel visited the country in 1844, and Pascal, a naval lieutenant, was there in 1859. A few commercial stations or comptoirs have
recently been established.
See Lubat, Eel. de I Afr. cccid. ; De Golbery, Voy. en Afr. en 1785; Amedee Tardieu, " Senegambie " in the Univers jtittoresque ; Raffenel, Voy. dans I Afr. occid., 1846 ; Rente algerienne et colo- niale for March 1860 ; Faidherbe, Chapitres de geographic and An- nuaire de Sentgal.
BÁMIÁN, a once renowned city in the territory now subject to the Afghans, in 34 50 N. lat., 67 44 E. long. Its remains lie in a valley of the Hazara country, on the chief road from. Kabul towards Turkestan, and immediately at the northern foot of that prolongation of the Indian Caucasus now called Koh-i-Baba (see vol. i. pp. 227, 241). The passes on the Kabul side are not less than 11,000 and ] 2,000 feet in absolute height, and those immediately to the north but little inferior. The river draining the valley is one of the chief sources of the Surkhab or Aksarai, an important tributary of the Upper Oxus (ibid. p. 241). The prominences of the cliffs which line the valley are crowned by the remains of numerous massive towers, whilst their precipitous faces are for 6 or 7 miles pierced by an infinity of ancient cave-dwellings, some of which are still occupied. The actual site of the old city is marked by mounds and remains of walls, and on an isolated rock in the middle of the valley are considerable ruins of what appears to have been the acropolis, now known to the people as Ghulgulah. But the most famous remains at Bamidn are two colossal standing idols, carved in the cliffs on the north side of the valley. Burnes estimates the height of the greater at 120 feet, the other at half as much. These images, which have been much injured, apparently by cannon-shot, are cut in niches in the rock, and both images and niches have been coated with stucco. There is an inscription, not yet inter preted or copied, over the greater idol, and on each side of its niche are staircases leading to a chamber near the head, which shows traces of elaborate ornamentation in azure and gilding. The surface of the niches also has been painted with figures. In one of the branch valleys is a similar colossus, somewhat inferior in size to the second of those two ; and there are indications of other niches and idols. As seen from the rock of Ghulgulah, Bamian, with its ruined towers, its colossi, its innumerable grottoes, and with the singular red colour of its barren soil, presents an impressive aspect of desolation and mystery.
That the idols of Bamian, about which so many conjectures have been uttered, were Buddhist figures, is ascertained from the narra tive of the Chinese pilgrim, Hwen Thsang, who saw them in their splendour in 630 A.D. His description of the position of the city and images corresponds accurately with modern reports. He assigns to the greater image, which was gilt (the object, probably, of the plaster coating), a height of 140 or 150 feet, and to the second 100. The latter would seem from his account to have been sheathed with copper. Still vaster than these was a recumbent figure, 2 miles east of Bamian, representing Sakya Buddha entering Nirvana, i.e., in act of death. This was " about 1000 feet in length." No traces of this are alluded to by modern travellers, but in all likelihood it was only formed of rubble plastered (as is the case still with such Nirvana figures in Indo-China), and of no durability. For a city so notable Bamian has a very obscure history. It does not seem possible to identify it with any city in classical geography : Alex andria ad Caucasum it certainly was not. The first known mention of it seems to be that by Hwen Thsang, at a time when apparently it had already passed its meridian, and was the head of one of the email states into which the empire of the White Huns had broken up. At a later period Bamian was for half a century, ending 1214 A.p., the seat of a branch of the Ghori dynasty, ruling over Tokharistan, or the basin of the Upper Oxus. The place was long besieged, and finally annihilated (1222) by Chinghiz Khan, whose wrath was exasperated at the death of a favourite grandson by an arrow from its walls. There appears to be no further record of Bamian as a city ; but the character of ruins at Ghulgulah agrees with traditions on the spot in indicating that the city must Ir.ive been rebuilt after the time of the Mongol?, and again perished. In 1840, during the British occupation of Kabul, Bamian was the scene of an action in which Colonel Denny with a small force routed Dost Mahommed Khan, accompanied by a number of Uzbeg chiefs. (Burnes, Juurney to Bokhara; Masson s Journeys, and his papers in the /. As. Soc., Bengal; Julien, Ptlerins Bouddhistes; E. Thomas in J. It. As. Soc., &c.)
BAMPTON, Rev. John, founder of the series of divinity lectures at Oxford known as the Barnpton Lectures, appears to have been born in 1G89 and to have died in 1751. He was a member of Trinity College, Oxford, and for some time canon of Salisbury. His will directs that eight lectures shall be delivered annually on as many Sunday mornings in full term, " between the commencement of the last month in Lent term and the end of the third week in Act term, upon either of the following subjects : to confirm and establish the Christian faith, and to confute all heretics and schismatics upon the divine authority of the Holy Scriptures upon the authority of the writings of the primitive fathers, as to the faith and practice of the primitive Church upon the divinity of our Lord and Saviour Jesus Christ upon the divinity of the Holy Ghost upon the articles of the Christian faith as com prehended in the Apostles and Nicene Creeds." The lecturer, who must be at least a Master of Arts of Oxford or Cambridge, is chosen yearly by the heads of colleges, and no one can be chosen a second time. The series of lectures began in 1780, and has continued to the present time unbroken, with the exception of the years 1834 and 1835, when no lecturers were appointed, and 1841, when no lectures were delivered. Several of the lecturers have been men of great eminence and ability ; Heber, for in stance, was selected in 1815, Whately in 1822, Milman in 1827, Home in 1828, Hampden in 1832. Gculburn in 1850, Mansel in 1858, Liddon in 1866. The institution has done much to preserve, at least in some quarters, a high standard in English theology ; and the lectures as a whole form a very valuable body of apologetic literature.
BANANA (Musa sapientum), a gigantic herbaceous plant belonging to the natural order Musacece, originally a native of the tropical parts of the East, but now cultivated in all tropical and sub-tropical climates. It forms a spurious kind of stem, rising 15 or 20 feet by the sheathing bases of the leaves, the bladea of which sometimes measure as much as 10 feet in length by 2 feet across. The stem bears several clusters of fruit, which somewhat resemble cucumbers in size and form ; it dies down after maturing the fruit. The weight of the produce of a single cluster is sometimes as much as 80 S>, and it was calculated by Humboldt that the productiveness of the banana as coin- pared with wheat is as 133 to 1, and as against potatoes 44 to 1. The varieties of banana cultivated in the tropics are as numerous as the varieties of apples in temperate regions, and the best authorities now agree that no specific difference exists between it and the plantain. The fruit is extensively used as food; and in many of the Pacific islands it is the staple on which the natives depend. In its immature condition it contains much starch, which on ripening changes into sugar ; and as a ripe fruit it has a sweet but somewhat flavourless taste. From the unripe fruit, dried in the sun, a useful and nutritious flour is pre pared. The following represents the percentage com position of the pulp of the ripe fruit : Nitrogenous matter, 4-820; sugar, pectin, <fcc., 19 657; fatty matter, 632; cellulose, 200; saline matter, 0791; water, 73-900. An analysis of the flour by Dr Murray Thomson yielded the following results : Water, 12 33 ; starch, 71 60; guru and sugar, 6*82; nitrogenous matter, 2 01 ; cellulose, 5 -9 9; oil, -50; salts, 64.
