376 Annual Report. 



likely to be presented in so many varied and interesting aspects 

 as in the present age, when the discoveries of all past genera- 

 tions are at once applied to the elevation of men from barbarian 

 life, and the effects of them all are to be experienced and 

 disclosed in a single lifetime. 



Missionaries are now establishing the discoveriesof Europe 

 far in tiie interior of our continent. The methods of raising 

 water by European instruments are now exercising the under- 

 standing of the Griqua on the deep and precipitous channel of 

 the Garicp, and Meteorology is finding a place among their 

 inquiries. Stations occupied by zealous and enterprising men 

 are everywhere rising, from whence there not only flows onward 

 the moral and intellectual influence of Christianity, but there also 

 the Missionary is himself prepared to collect and present those 

 numerical results, which alone afford confident data to that 

 Philosophy which analyses and determines the laws of our 

 temporal prosperity. 



Science also may gain in many of its departments, not only 

 from their own observations, but also because the Missionaries 

 are every where from the respected and commanding attitude 

 they sustain, prepared to give efficient and sustaining assistance 

 to all who prosecute useful inquiries. It surely deserves com- 

 mendation and not censure, that they display as much as their 

 contracted endeavours will admit, the advantages of ciulised 

 life, and give an examplary proof of the comfort and well-being 

 which science and art can confer. 



It is known that means have been afforded to a certain extent 

 x)f determining the structure and affinities of the languages of 

 South Africa, by the preparation of vocabularies and by 

 translations of portions of the Scriptures into their tongues. 

 One effort of this kind is now proceeding in the colony, by the 

 preparation of the New Testament in the Amakosina dialect. 

 In respect to these endeavours, it should be kept in view, 

 that some advantage will be derived from the adoption of some 

 uniform and known system of representing sounds in applying 

 the written characters of Europe to unwritten languages. The 

 Malay tongue, for instance, if transferred from the Arabic 

 character into the Roman at Batavia, will bear a very different 

 aspect to that which it would acquire by the same process in 

 London, and difficulties may be unnecessarily accumulated in 

 tracing the affinities of languages, which a little attention might 

 prevent. 



Anything which tends to elucidate the character of the pre- 

 vailing tongues in this extremity of our continent, will be of 

 great value in the interesting questions respecting the origin 

 and migrations of different races. The positions to be thereby 

 analiscd arc of this kind : have all their tongues sprung from 



