THE BECHUANA LANGUAGE. 
63 
®iul Labors in South Africa,” was busily engaged in carry- 
iug through the press, with which his station is furnished, 
the Bible in the language of the Bechuanas, which is called 
Siehuana. This has been a work of immense labor ; and as 
he was the first to reduce their speech to a written form, 
and has had his attention directed to the study for at least 
thirty years, he may be supposed to be better adapted for 
the task than any man living. Some idea of the copious- 
ness of tho languago may bo formed from tho fact that 
oven ho never spends a week at his work without discover- 
•ng now words; the phenomenon, therefore, of any man 
who, after a few months’ or years’ study of a nativo tongue, 
cackles forth a torrent of vocables, may well bo wondorod 
ft t, if it is meant to convoy instruction. In my own case, 
though I have had as much intercourse with tho purest 
diom as most Englishmen, and havo studied tho languago 
carefully, yet I can nover utter an important statement 
without doing so very slowly 7 , and repeating it too, lost the 
foreign accont, which is distinctly poreeptiblo in all Euro- 
peans, should render tho sense unintelligible. In this 1 
iouow tho examplo of the Bochuana orators, who, on im- 
portant matters, always speak slowly, deliberately, and 
with reiteration. The capabilities of this languago may 
bo inforrod from tho fact that tho Pentateuch is fully ex- 
pressed in Mr. Moffat’s translation in fowor words than in 
•bo Greek Soptuagint, and in a very considerably smaller 
cumber than in our own English version. Tho language 
however, so simplo in its construction, that its copious- 
ness by no moans requires tho explanation that tho people 
havo fallen from a former stato of civilization and culture. 
J'ho fact of tho completo translation of tho Biblo at a 
8 tation soven bundrod miles inland from tho Capo naturally 
Bll S{?68t8 tho question ■whether it is likely to bo permanently 
Csoful, a n( ] whether Christianity, ns planted by mod ora 
"fissions, is likely to retain its vitality without constant 
* u pplie8 of foreign teaching. It would certainly bo no 
^uso for congratulation if tho Bochuana Biblo soeniod at 
