CUEVA CUFIC INSCRIPTIONS 561 parish churches, a Jesuit college, four con- vents, a hospital, a governor's residence, chamber of finance, prison, and other public edifices. There are also extensive sugar re- fineries and manufactories of cotton cloths, hats, pottery, confectionery, and of a cheese resembling Parmesan. The trade, besides these manufactures, is chiefly in grain and cin- chona bark. The climate is agreeable, and the surrounding country produces the various cereals, sugar, cotton, and cochineal. Gold, silver, copper, mercury, and sulphur are found in the vicinity. In the environs are many notable Indian ruins, among which is the great highway of the incas. South of the city is the mountain of Tarqui, which was select- ed by La Oondamine, Bouguer, and Godin, in 1742, for establishing their meridian line. In 1828 the battle of Tarqui, between the ar- mies of Colombia and Peru, was fought near Cuenca. CUEVA, Juan de la, a Spanish poet, born in Seville about 1550, died about 1608. He wrote several dramas on national subjects ; an epic (La eonquista de la Betica, printed in 1603) on the conquest of Seville by St. Ferdinand, an unsuccessful imitation of Tasso's "Jerusa- lem Delivered ;" and over 100 ballads (Coro Fe- J)eo de romances historiales, Seville, 1587-'88), mostly taken from the histories of Greece and Rome, and only four or five from that of Spain. His fame rests more particularly upon his hav- ing been the first Spaniard to attempt didactic poetry ; his poem, entitled Egemplar poetico, which he wrote in 1605, but which was first printed in 1774 in vol. viii. of the Parnaso espanol, being the earliest and most original effort of the kind in Spanish. Cl FAIL See CUFIC INSCRIPTIONS. CUFFEE. I. Paul, a native Indian preacher of the Shinnecock tribe of Indians on Long Island, born in 1757, died March 7j 1812. He was for 13 years in the employ of the New York missionary society, and was regarded as an able preacher. He was a successor of the Rev. Samson Occom and the Rev. Peter John. II. Paul, a negro sea captain, born on one of the Elizabeth isles, near New Bed- ford, Mass., in 1759, died Sept. 7, 1818. His father was a native of Africa, and once a slave; his mother was of Indian extraction. He accumulated a handsome fortune in sea- faring pursuits, and for many years commanded his own vessel, having a crew composed en- tirely of negroes, and visiting many American and foreign ports. He was an esteemed mem- ber of the society of Friends. It is related that on one occasion, when the custom house officer of Norfolk, Va., refused him a clearance because he was a negro, he proceeded at once to Washington to submit his case to President Madison, with whom he was well acquainted. "James," said he to the president, "thy cus- toms collector at Norfolk refuses me my clear- ance ; I wish an order from thee which shall compel him to give it me." Madison inquired into the circumstances, and wrote the required order. In the latter part of his life Cuffee encouraged the emigration of free people of color to Sierra Leone. He corresponded with prominent friends of that enterprise in Great Britain and Africa, and in 1811 visited the colony in his own vessel to determine for him- self its advantages. In 1815 he carried out to Sierra Leone 38 colored persons as emi- grants, 30 of them at his own expense, and on his arrival there furnished them with the means of subsistence, spending in this enter- prise nearly $4,000. He was anxious to carry other companies of emigrants ; but while wait- ing for the permission of the British govern- ment, American vessels being at that time ex- cluded from the trade of the British colonies, he was seized with the illness which termina- ted his life. CUFIC INSCRIPTIONS AND COINS have their name from Cufah, a city of Irak-Arabi, on the Nahr-Cufah or Euphrates, in the pashalic of Bagdad. Cufah was built under Omar, the second caliph, after his capture of Modain, the capital of Sassanidic Persia. It was the resi- dence of Ali, the fourth caliph, and a century later of Abul Abbas, the founder of the Ab- basside dynasty ; it also possessed a celebrated school. After the foundation of Bagdad by Al-Mansoor, the second Abbasside, Cufah was neglected and began to decay. In the time of Mohammed the Arabs of Hedjaz used a wri- ting similar to the Neskhi, which may be seen in some papyri in the Memoires of the French academy and in the "Asiatic Journal." Ac- cording to Arabic tradition, writing at that time was newly invented and in little use. Whether the Arabs of Yemen, Irak, Mesopo- tamia, and central Arabia had derived their writing, much earlier, from the Phoenician, or Palmyrean, or Sassanidic, is not ascertained. The Cufic, or properly Kiufi, however, is prob- ably derived from the Syrian estrangJielo (arpoy- 7^/lof, round). It is coarse, stiff, angular, and not so distinct as the modes of writing derived from it. It consists of 18 forms of letters, 8 of which, by being marked with diacritic points,, represent 10 sounds of the modern Arabic wri- ting (these we include in parentheses), namely : a, 5, (t, th), the English j (A, M), d (dh, the Eng- lish th, as in this), r (z), s (sh), ss (dz, Spanish c in cele~bre), t, ain (ghain, both peculiar gutturals, or rather faucals), /, ~k harsh, Tc soft, I, m, n, Ji (or merely the spiritus lenis), u, i or y (Ger- man i, j). In manuscripts, the vowels are^ sometimes marked with red or yellow points. This writing was used in manuscripts for about three centuries ; on coins and sepulchral monu- ments and in titles of books, for about seven centuries after Mohammed. Even now the writing of the African Arabs and Moors re- sembles the Kiufi ; while the orientals, who are very fond of flowing, elegant, slender letters, use, especially for copying, the Neskhi, whose introduction is attributed to Ibn Mokla, in the fourth century of the Hegira. Them
