On studying tribal customs we find that much similarity arises from the very constitution of human nature. Circumstances also exert a great influence. Races are so modified when they obtain cows, horses, or even the rudiments of a calendar, that we are at once puzzled by the difference between them and the rest of their clan. Besides, we must ever remember the enormous influence of the individual. A whole tribe like the Ovambo derived the habit of squirting water in the face to prevent witchcraft from one king. If a stray man settled in Negroland with two or three wives 3000 years ago, the descendents of this person would now count by millions on millions! What are now large African tribes evidently descended from an ancestor that lived not so many centuries ago. The whole tribe naturally follows and develops certain characteristics of this ancestor, and as it keeps aloof from other tribes, it soon has distinct peculiarities in speech and customs. Even in England almost each county has certain peculiarities, a fact which will illustrate to what a great extent such developments may grow among tribes that have no written literature, and no means of keeping up communication with their neighbours. Often have I wondered, as I gazed on these African mountains and valleys, what tales they could tell, if they only found a tongue. Much, I believe, may be yet learned by the study of native legends and mythologies, which frequently condescend on names; but after all, there are many secrets which will remain undisclosed until those mountains and valleys give up their dead. CHAPTER XVII. AFRICAN PHILOLOGY. “There is a notion that African languages are rude and imperfect. They are no such thing.”—BISHOP STEERE. What makes one language more perfect than another? What is a philosophical language? We judge a language by the way in which it fulfils its purpose: its great purpose being to express thought. Every language is a means of expressing thought by words. In one tongue we express certain thoughts easily and conveniently, which in another we have to express in a cumbrous manner. Thus instead of saying “inapplicabilities,” we might have to say “the-plural-condition-of-not-being-able-to-fold-one-thing-into-another”. To express thought words must be used in a particular way: the words themselves are the vocabulary, the particular way in which they are used is the grammar. In estimating a language, we must consider (A) its vocabulary, (B) its grammar. A. THE VOCABULARY.