y
these men of the appearances of the crops at different parts, and the
astonishing minuteness of the speakers' topography, we were persuaded
that in some cases we were wrong, and felt rather humiliated. Every
knoll, hill, mountain, and every peak on a range has a name; and so has
every watercourse, dell, and plain. In fact, every feature and portion
of the country is so minutely distinguished by appropriate names, that it
would take a lifetime to decipher their meaning. It is not the want, but
the superabundance of names that misleads travellers, and the terms used
are so multifarious that good scholars will at times scarcely know more
than the subject of conversation. Though it is a little apart from the
topic of the attention which the headmen pay to agriculture, yet it may
be here mentioned, while speaking of the fulness of the language, that we
have heard about a score of words to indicate different varieties of
gait--one walks leaning forward, or backward, swaying from side to side,
loungingly, or smartly, swaggeringly, swinging the arms, or only one arm,
head down or up, or otherwise; each of these modes of walking was
expressed by a particular verb; and more words were used to designate the
different varieties of fools than we ever tried to count.

Mr. Moffat has translated the whole Bible into the language of the
Bechuana, and has diligently studied this tongue for the last forty-four-
years; and, though knowing far more of the language than any of the
natives who have been reared on the Mission-station of Kuruman, he does
not pretend to have mastered it fully even yet. However copious it may
be in terms of which we do not feel the necessity, it is poor in others,
as in abstract terms, and words used to describe mental operations.

Our third day's march ended in the afternoon of the 27th September, 1863,
at the village of Chinanga on the banks of a branch of the Loangwa. A
large, rounded mass of granite, a thousand feet high, called _Nombe
rume_, stand on the plain a few miles off. It is quite remarkable,
because it has so little vegetation on it. Several other granitic hills
stand near it, ornamented with trees, like most heights of this country,
and a heap of blue mountains appears away in the north.

The effect of the piercing winds upon the men had never been got rid of.
Several had been unable to carry a load ever since we ascended to the
highlands; we had lost one, and another poor lad was so ill