tage
of them in make, features, and industry.

A Kruman is pre-eminently the _free labourer_ of Africa. In the slave
trade he has engaged less than any of his neighbours, attaches himself
readily to the whites, and, in his native country, as well as in Sierra
Leone, Coast Town, and other places of his temporary denizenship, is
quick of perception and amenable to instruction. His language is the
_Grebo_ tongue, and it has been reduced to writing by the American
missionaries of Cape Palmas. It has decided affinities with those of
the Mandingo tongues to the north, the Fanti dialects of the Gold Coast,
and, in all probability, still closer ones with those of the Ivory
coast. These last, however, are but imperfectly known; indeed, a single
vocabulary of the _Avekvom_ language, in the "American Oriental
Journal," furnishes nine-tenths of our philological data for the parts
between Cape Palmas and Cape Apollonia.

The best measure of the heterogeneousness of the Sierra Leone population
is to be found in Mrs. Kilham's vocabularies. That lady collected, at
Free Town, specimens of thirty-one African tongues, from Negroes then
and there resident. Of these--

A. Eight belonged to the Mandingo group, _viz._, Mandingo Proper, Susu,
Bambara, Kossa, Pessa, Kissi, Bullom, and Timmani.

B. Two were dialects of the Grebo (Kru): the Kru, and the Bassa.

C. Two were Fanti: the Fanti and the Ashanti, closely allied dialects.

D. Two were Dahoman: the Fot, and the Popo.

E. Two Benin: the Benin Proper, and the Moko, languages of a tract but
little known.

F. One Wolof, from the Senegal.

G. Eight from the parts between the rivers Formosa and Loango, _viz._,
the Bongo, the Ako, the Ibu, the Rungo, the Akuonga, the Karaba, the
Uobo, the Kouri.

H. One from the river Kongo, _i.e._, the Kongo properly so-called.

I. Two from the Lower Niger, but, still separated from the coast--the
Tapua (Nufi) and Appa.

K. Three from the widely-spread nations of the interior--the Fulah, the
Haussa, and the Bornu.

I do not say that all Mrs. Kilham's specimens represent mutually
unintelligible tongues; probably they do not. At the same time, as
several decidedly different languages are omitted, the list understates,
rather than exaggerates, the number of the divisions and subdivisions of
the western African populations, as inferred from the divisions and
subdivisions of the language.

Thus, no samples are given of the--

1. _Sereres._--Pasto