26 o 
Corisco. 
southward regions differ even more from the 
Benga. Yet all evidently belong to the great 
South African family. 
Mr. Mackey, who explored Corisco Island in 
1849, assures us that scarcely any of the older 
inhabitants were born there ; they came from the 
continent north or north-east of the bay, gra¬ 
dually forcing their way down. The character¬ 
istic difference of the Benga, the Bakele, and the 
Mpongwe dialects is as follows : “ The Mpongwes 
have a great partiality for the use of the passive 
voice, and avoid the active when the passive can 
be used. The Bakele verb delights in the active 
voice, and will avoid the passive even by a con¬ 
siderable circumlocution. The Benga takes an 
intermediate position in this respect, and uses the 
active and passive very much as we do in 
English.” 
The Corisco branch of the Presbyterian Board 
of Foreign Missions was established by the Rev. 
James S. Mackey in 1850. It made as much 
progress as could be expected, and in 1862 it 
numbered no scholars and 65 communicants; 
the total of those baptized was 80, and 15 had 
been suspended. The members applied them¬ 
selves, as the list of their publications shows, 
with peculiar ardour to the language, and they 
did not neglect natural history and short explora¬ 
tions of the adjoining interior. They had sent 
