in the country called in our maps Usumbara, which is a mountainous district on the mainland of Africa, lying opposite to the Island of Pemba, and visible in clear weather from the town of Zanzibar.’ Kisawahili is at once rich and poor. It may contain 20,000 words, of which, perhaps, 3000 are generally used, and 10,000 have been published. Copious to cumbrousness in concrete, collective, and ideal words, it abounds in names of sensuous objects; there is a term for every tree, shrub, plant, grass, and bulb, and I have shown that the several ages of the cocoa-nut are differently called. It wants compounds, abstract and metaphysical expressions: these must be borrowed from the Arabic, fitted with terminal and internal vowels, to suit the tongue, and modified according to the organs of the people, harsh and guttural consonants being exchanged for easy cognates. Even the numerals beyond twenty are mere Semitic corruptions. All new ideas, that of servant, for instance, must be expressed by a short description. In the more advanced South African dialects, as in the Mpongwe of the Gaboon, a compound or a derivative would be found to include all requirements. The sound would be soft and harmonious were it not for the double initial consonants, aspirated or not; for the perpetual reduplications (the Arabic Radif),[117] a savage and childish contrivance to intensify the word, and for the undue recurrence of the coarse letter K. Possibly the fondness of the people for tautology may have tended to develop their tautophony and euphony. Abounding in vowels and liquids, the language admits of vast volubility of utterance; in anger or excitement the words flow like a torrent, and each dovetails into its neighbour till the whole speech becomes one vocable. Withal, every vowel has its distinct and equal articulation. It wants the short and obscure sound of the English and other European languages (e. g. a li_a_r, h_e_r, f_i_rst, act_o_r, and h_u_rled) called by us the original vowel sound. Like the Chinese and Maori languages, and the other South African tongues, it confounds the so often convertible letters, the L and the R.[118] The slaves, the Wasawahili, and the wild natives mostly prefer the former, e. g. Mabeluki for Mabruki, and the Arabs and civilized speakers the latter, although Mr Cooley (Geography of N’yassi, p. 20) asserts the contrary. The metastasis, however, appears to me often arbitrary, occasioning trouble, e. g. when ku ría (to eat) becomes ku lía (to weep). Dr Livingstone, (chap. xxx. First Expedition) complains of Loangoa, Luenya, and Bazizulu being transformed into Arroangoa, Ruanha, and Morusurus, but he also similarly errs when he converts Karagwah into Kalagwe, and when (p. 266) he uses indifferently Maroro and Maloli. The R is often inserted pleonastically, to prevent hiatus, as Ku potéra for Ku potéa, to lose; Ku pakíra for Ku pakía, to pack. Sometimes, again, it is omitted, as U’ongo for Urongo, a lie. In pronouncing it the tongue