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.