usily
engaged in carrying through the press, with which his station is
furnished, the Bible in the language of the Bechuanas, which is called
Sichuana. This has been a work of immense labor; and as he was the first
to reduce their speech to a written form, and has had his attention
directed to the study for at least thirty years, he may be supposed to
be better adapted for the task than any man living. Some idea of the
copiousness of the language may be formed from the fact that even he
never spends a week at his work without discovering new words; the
phenomenon, therefore, of any man who, after a few months' or years'
study of a native tongue, cackles forth a torrent of vocables, may well
be wondered at, if it is meant to convey instruction. In my own case,
though I have had as much intercourse with the purest idiom as most
Englishmen, and have studied the language carefully, yet I can never
utter an important statement without doing so very slowly, and repeating
it too, lest the foreign accent, which is distinctly perceptible in all
Europeans, should render the sense unintelligible. In this I follow the
example of the Bechuana orators, who, on important matters, always speak
slowly, deliberately, and with reiteration. The capabilities of this
language may be inferred from the fact that the Pentateuch is fully
expressed in Mr. Moffat's translation in fewer words than in the Greek
Septuagint, and in a very considerably smaller number than in our
own English version. The language is, however, so simple in its
construction, that its copiousness by no means requires the explanation
that the people have fallen from a former state of civilization and
culture. Language seems to be an attribute of the human mind and
thought; and the inflections, various as they are in the most barbarous
tongues, as that of the Bushmen, are probably only proofs of the
race being human, and endowed with the power of thinking; the fuller
development of language taking place as the improvement of our other
faculties goes on. It is fortunate that the translation of the Bible has
been effected before the language became adulterated with half-uttered
foreign words, and while those who have heard the eloquence of the
native assemblies are still living; for the young, who are brought up
in our schools, know less of the language than the missionaries; and
Europeans born in the country, while possessed of the idiom perfectly,
if not otherwise educated, c