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 ‘Specimen of the Sowhelian Language’ (Etchings of a Whaling Cruise. New York, 1846).[115] Strange to say, the ‘Mombas Mission’ translated the Gospels into the obscure local Kinyika, when only three chapters of Genesis and a version of the English Prayer Book (Tubingen, 1850-54) were published ‘in the one language, by the instrumentality of which the missionary and the merchant can master in a short time all the dialects spoken from the Line down to the Cape of Good Hope.’ Dr Krapf’s ‘Outline of the Elements of the Kisauaheli Language’ (Tubingen, 1850) requires great alterations and additions, especially in the alliterative and other characteristic parts of the tongue. Messrs Rebmann and Erhardt, who both were capable of writing a scholar-like book, or of perfecting the ‘Outline,’ turned their attention to the languages of the Nyassa, Usumbara, and the Wakwafi. In 1857 M. Guillain published, as an Appendix to his third volume, a short grammar and vocabulary of the ‘langue Souahhéli:’ they are mere bald sketches, and they convey but the scantiest idea of what they attempt to illustrate. A good study of Kisawahili would facilitate the acquisition of the whole sub-family. For my own use I commenced a grammar intended to illustrate the intricate and difficult combinations and the peculiar euphony which here seems to be the first object of speech: unfortunately my transfer to West Africa left it, like my vocabularies, in a state of MS. My friend Mr Trübner has lately advertised a volume called ‘East African folk-lore, Swahili Tales, as told by the natives of Zanzibar,’ with an English translation by Edward Steere, L.L.D., Rector of Little Steeping, Lincolnshire, and Chaplain to Bishop Tozer (London: Bell and Daldy, 1870);[116] and Dr Krapf has proposed to publish the Juo ya Herkal (Book of Heraclius), ‘an account of the wars of Mohammed with Askaf, Governor of Syria, to the Greek Emperor Heraclius, in rhyme; a MS. in ancient Ki-Suahili written in Arabic characters.’ Also ‘Juo ja Utenzi, Poems and Mottoes in rhyme,’ the dialect being that formerly spoken in the Islands of Patta and Lamu. Both the ‘linguistic treasures’ were presented to the Oriental Society of Halle. The last publications which I have seen are ‘Specimens of the Swahili Language’ (Zanzibar, 1866); ‘Collections for a Handbook of the Swahili Language, as spoken at Zanzibar,’ by Bishop Tozer and Rev. E. Steere (Zanzibar, 1865), and the Rev. E. Steere’s ‘Collections for a Handbook of the Shambala Language’ (Zanzibar, 1867), the ‘tongue spoken