In my first efforts to learn African languages I found that a great deal of what was said to me, especially by interpreters, was quite useless, simply because the poor fellows were trying to adapt their language to a European capacity! NATIVE IDIOMS. When one attempts to obtain information through interpreters, without knowing anything of their peculiar idioms, he is liable to the strangest blunders. Those that try to speak with him carry their African idioms into English. Natives have great difficulty in knowing the difference between _before_ and _after_. Boys that have been writing English essays for more than a year, think nothing of writing deliberately about what men did on the earth _before_ they were created. There is another idiom still more fitted to produce confusion, and when an Englishman writes down in a multitude of instances what is the reverse of the truth we are often able to point out the cause. He puts to a native the question, “He did not go, did he?” The native replies “_Yes_,” where an Englishman would say “No”. Consequently every question put in this form will be answered in a manner that cannot fail to mislead. In the same way natives confound the active and the passive voice in verbs. DISTRACTING CIRCUMSTANCES. Even after one has become familiar with some of their idioms he cannot trust to all the information that he supposes himself to acquire. I had begun to hold conversations with the natives, in their own tongue, about six weeks after my arrival, and I well remember that I often got information exactly similar to what Mr Pickwick got from his cabman. When a native sees a person noting down anything, he makes up his mind to say something worth noting! So much did I feel this that at one time I endeavoured to keep my book out of sight. While they were unaccustomed to it, it introduced into the conversation an element that was very unnatural. One plan I took was to have a pencil in my hand which I pretended to be playing with. I thus got down some new words upon my thumb-nail, and was beginning to congratulate myself on the success of my stratagem. After I sat for about ten minutes another man approached our group, when my friends hailed him in these words, “Come here and talk with the white man. He is writing on his fingers. He has written three new things already!” After this I saw that such a trick was quite useless. Not only had they seen it all, but they could tell how many words I had written. Great was the laughter that followed, and the new comer examined the guilty thumb-nail! ROMANTIC INFORMATION.