CHAP, ui.] HYENA'S INSOLENCE. ' 89 



Mr. Eath and Mr. Bam. None of them knew a word 

 of the language. No European had ever as yet learnt 

 it, and the natives laughed at them, and annoyed them 

 most excessively; they were mobbed and could do 

 scarcely anything. At last, a lazy fellow, with his nose 

 half-bitten off by a hyena, attached himself to them. 

 He happened, besides being lazy, to be also a particu- 

 larly intelligent man, and soon understood what the 

 missionaries were driving at, when they endeavoured 

 to get at the pronouns and tenses of tliis tongue of 

 prefixes. He was of the greatest use to them, and, 

 mainly through his aid, they have, after five or six 

 years' labour, fuUy acquired the language. Their 

 grammar and dictionary were to have been sent in 

 1852, to the professor of philology at Bonn, and have 

 probably been received by this time. 



This mail's nose was seized by a hyena while he was 

 asleep on his back — very unpleasant, and an excellent 

 story to frighten children with. I could hardly believe 

 it until a case occurred — quite d-propos. An old 

 Bushwoman, who encamped under the lee of a few 

 sticks and reeds that she had bent together, after the 

 custom of those people, was sleeping coiled uj) close 

 round the fire, with her lank feet straggling out in the 

 dark, when a hyena, who was prowling about in the 

 early morning, laid hold of her heel, and pulled her 

 bodily half out of the hut. Her howls alarmed the 

 hyena, who quitted his hold ; and she hobbled up the 

 next morning to us for plaisters and bandages. The 

 very next night the old lady slept in the same fashion 

 as before, and the hyena came in the same way, and 



