idiom, very few Europeans acquire an accurate knowledge
of African tongues unless they begin to learn when young.
A complaint as to the poverty of the language is often only
a sure proof of the scanty attainments of the complainant,
and gross mistakes are often made hv the most experienced.
We once caught a sound like “ Syria” as the name of .a
country on the other side of a river. I t was “ Psidia,”
and meant only the “ other side.” A grave professor put
down in a scientific work “ Kaia ” as the native name of
a certain lizard. Kaia simply means “ I don’t know! ” the
answer which he received. This name was also applied in
equal innocence to a range of mountains. Every one can
recal mistakes, the remembrance of which, in after years,
brings a blush to his brow. In general the opinion of an
intelligent missionary who has diligently studied the language
is superior to that of any traveller. Quite as sensible if not
more pertinent answers will usually be given by Africans
to those who know their language, as are obtained from our
own uneducated poor; and could we but forget that a couple
of centuries back, the ancestors of common people in England—
probably our own great-great-grandfathers—were as
unenlightened as the Africans are now, we might maunder
away about intellect, and fancy that the tacit inference
would be drawn that our own is Arch-Angelic. The low
motives which often actuate the barbarians do, unfortunately,
bear abundant, crops of mean actions among servants
and even in higher ranks of more civilized people; but we
hope that these may decrease in the general improvement
of our race by the diffusion of true religion.
Dr. Kirk very properly divides the year into three seasons,
a cold, a hot, and a rainy season. The cold period lasts
through May, June, and July; the hot prevails in August,
September, and October. The rains may be expected during
the remaining months of the year.'
The rainy season of Tette differs a little from that of some
of the other intertropical regions; the quantity of rain-fall
being considerably less. It begins in November and ends in
April. During our first season in that place, only a little over
nineteen inches of rain fell. In an average year, and when
the crops are good, the fall amounts to about thirty-five
inches. On many days it does not rain at; all, and rarely is
it wet all day; some days have merely a passing shower,
preceded and followed by hot sunshine; occasionally an interval
of a week, or even a fortnight, passes without a drop
of rain, and then the crops suffer from the sun. These
partial droughts happen in December and January. The
heat appears to increase to a certain point in the different
latitudes so as to necessitate a change, by some law similar
to that which regulates the intense cold in other, countries.
After several days of progressive heat here, on the hottest of
which the thermometer probably reaches 103° in the shade,
a break occurs in the weather, and a thunderstorm cools the
air for a time. At Kuruman, when the thermometer , stood
above 84°, rain might be expected; at Kolobeng, the point
at which we looked for a storm was 96°. The Zambesi is in
flood twice in the course of the year; the first flood, a
partial one, attains its greatest height about the end of
December or beginning of January; the second, and
greatest, occurs after the river inundates the interior, in a
manner similar to the overflow of the Nile, this rise not
taking place at Tette until March. The Portuguese say
that the greatest height which the March' floods attain is
thirty feet at Tette, and this happens only about every
fourth year; their observations, however, have never been