538 NATIVE LANGUAGE. Chap. XXV. 



every feature and portion of the country is so minutely distin- 

 guished by appropriate names, that it would take a lifetime to 

 decipher their meaning. It is not the want, but the super- 

 abundance of names that misleads travellers, and the terms 

 used are so multifarious that good scholars will at times scarcely 

 know more than the subject of conversation. Though it is a 

 little apart from the topic of the attention which the headmen 

 pay to agriculture, yet it may be here mentioned, while speak- 

 ing of the fulness of the language, that we have heard about 

 a score of words to indicate different varieties of gait — one 

 walks leaning forward, or backward, swaying from side to 

 side, loungingly, or smartly, swaggeringly, swinging the arms, 

 or only one arm, head down or up, or otherwise ; each of 

 these modes of walking was expressed by a particular verb ; 

 and more words were used to designate the different varieties 

 of fools than we ever tried to count. 



Mr. Moffat has translated the whole Bible into the language 

 of the Bechuana, and has diligently studied this tongue for 

 the last forty-four years ; and, though knowing far more of the 

 language than any of the natives who have been reared on 

 the Mission-station of Kuruman, he does not pretend to have 

 mastered it fully even yet. However copious it may be in terms 

 of which we do not feel the necessity, it is poor in others, as in 

 abstract terms, and words used to describe mental operations. 



Our third day's march ended in the afternoon of the 

 27th September, 1863, at the village of Chinanga on 

 the banks of a branch of the .Loangwa. A large, rounded 

 mass of granite, a thousand feet high, called Norribe rume, 

 stands on the plain a few miles off. It is quite remarkable, 

 because it has so little vegetation on it. Several other granitic 

 hills stand near it, ornamented with trees, like most heights 

 of this country, and a heap of blue mountains appears away 

 in the north. 



