THE KISA WAHILI. 



445 



confined to a few sheets npon the subject of 

 Bao or Uganga (Rami or geoniancy), to proverbs 

 and proverbial sayings, mostly quatrains; to 

 riddles and rabbit tales, which here represent the 

 hare legends of the Namaquas and the spider 

 stories of the Gold Coast ; to Mashairi, or songs 

 rhymeless, measureless, and unmusical, and to 

 ' Utenzi,' religious poems, and eulogies of the 

 brave. 



In Zanzibar Island Arabic is ever making 

 inroads upon the African tongue, and the student 

 who knows the former will soon master the 

 latter. The first short vocabulary, by Mr Salt, 

 was published in 1814, and was presently followed 

 by others, especially the ' Soahili vocabulary ' 

 of the late Mr Samuel K. Masury, of Zanzibar 

 (Memoirs of the American Academy, Cambridge, 

 May, 1845), and Mr J. Ross Browne's 6 Speci- 

 men of the Sowhelian Language' (Etchings of 

 a Whaling Cruise. New York, 1846). 1 Strange 

 to say, the 6 Mombas Mission ' translated the 

 Gospels into the obscure ]ocal Kinyika, when 

 only three chapters of Genesis and a version of 

 the English Prayer Book (Tubingen, 1850—54) 



1 Mr Eoss Browne has lately been engaged in writing a 

 voluminous report to the Government at Washington upon 

 the mineral resources of the Western States of the Union. 



